Apni Party, Azad’s DPAP on shaky ground

Srinagar, August 23

Advertisement

The Apni Party and Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) were formed with much fanfare after the abrogation of Article 370, but both have failed to make a mark in the UT’s political spectrum and continue to lose founding members and senior leaders.

As Jammu and Kashmir remained without any elected government, former PDP leader Altaf Bukhari and former Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad formed their own parties with dozens of former legislators and senior political leaders. But the two parties continue to see consecutive setbacks ahead of the Assembly elections.

In March 2020, Bukhari announced the formation of the Apni Party. Formed with more than a dozen of former legislators, the organisation was dubbed as a regional party with a national outlook. In the recent Lok Sabha poll, the party faced drubbing with its candidates losing their security deposit.

If that was not enough, former legislator from South Kashmir Abdul Rahim Rather, a founding member of the party left it on Friday.

Rather said he could not go to the public with the manifesto, which was recently released by the party. “So, I decided to quit,” he added. The Apni Party released the party manifesto this week and promised to work for the restoration of statehood. Since the elections were announced, a number of its leaders have quit the party.

A prominent Gujjar leader of Apni Party and former Minister, Chowdhary Zulfikar Ali, recently joined the BJP after leaving the Apni Party. Vice-president and senior leader Usman Majid, a top leader from North Kashmir Bandipora, and former Srinagar MLA Noor Muhammad also resigned from the party.

Apni Party founder member Zaffar Manhas, who unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha poll from Anantnag-Rajouri, left the party as well ahead of the Assembly poll.

A large number of Congress leaders had joined the Democratic Progressive Azad Party, at the time of its launch in 2022. But, soon, things changed and many of them, including former deputy CM Tara Chand, left the party to return to the Congress.

Abdul Gani Khan, who also left the Congress to join Azad’s party, says he didn’t see any future in the party. “He (Azad) is my friend as well. I told him straightforward, I cannot stay here now and am going back to the Congress,” he said.

In the recent Lok Sabha elections, three of the party’s candidates — Saleem Parray from Anantnag-Rajouri, GM Saroori from Udhampur and Amir Bhat from Srinagar — lost their deposits. Ghulam Nabi Azad’s DPAP is unlikely to make a huge impact in the upcoming elections.

Saying party workers had been working in their constituencies since 2014, DPAP leader Amir Bhat told The Tribune that the party was in talks with several people.

He said the DPAP was the fastest growing party, and the aim was to give a chance to new faces. However, he also acknowledged that there are not many former legislators in the party. “But, we have people who are connected to the ground and you will see how good we will perform in the Assembly poll,” he said.Noor Baba, former political science professor at Kashmir University, told The Tribune that since 2019, the political situation changed and a group of politicians saw these as emerging parties and joined these.

“But over time, they realized that there is no public support for these parties and they are eventually shifting to the traditional ones. These people mostly want to remain in power, but in these parties, they didn’t get those things,” he added.

Baba said these new parties were perceived as implanted groups, and thus could not emerge as a political force in the Valley. “Many people saw these groups as the B team of the BJP, since the BJP has no political clout in Kashmir. These parties failed to grow because of patronage, not struggle.”