Mufti back in fray to make a point

Arun Joshi

PDP president Mehbooba Mufti  wants to prove a point. Her decision to contest the Lok Sabha poll from the most volatile constituency of Anantnag in south Kashmir is not all  about  winning the seat for a  third time – she had  won this seat twice  in 2004 and 2014 -  but  to tell friends and foes alike that  she has fire in her belly to fight the toughest battle against all odds at any given time.

It is a demonstrative act to show that she has the capacity and will to overpower the political odds that have multiplied manifold since the fall of her government last year. In this erstwhile  bastion of her party and family,  her biggest challenge this time is to reverse the misfortunes that befell her party in 2016 when pellets, bullets  and stones took lives on her watch as CM. Fighting rivals is a secondary political game.

One critical factor that has gone in her favour is the Election Commission of India’s decision to hold polling in Anantnag, that comprises four districts, in three phases. This unprecedented move has exonerated  Mehbooba of the charge that she could not hold the bypoll to this seat after she vacated it to become CM. Her security argument has been validated by the ECI now.

There is another underlined meaning in the whole exercise — an unspoken admission of sorts that it was a mistake to have inducted her younger brother Tassaduq Mufti into politics. He had flinched from the contest for this seat after he realised he could not measure up to the challenges of political battles on the ground. He went for the easy option of getting nominated to the Legislative Council and becoming a minister. That was Mehbooba’s bigger mistake. 

Political pundits  see a tough task ahead for her. Their collective view is it is not going to be a cakewalk for the former CM. They have their own theories and  logic drawn from the happenings on the ground — desertions by  several leaders and her inability to handle the turmoil and save young lives following the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani in July 2016. She is the face the people recall  that could not control things.

Lack of governance – that is common to all governments in Jammu and Kashmir – combined with the alliance that she re-fostered with the BJP in early 2016 – are the other factors that are being read out from the diary of the PDP chief whose political career was launched by her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in 1996 when she was made to contest the Bijbehra  Assembly seat  on the Congress ticket. She surprised everyone, including her parents,  by winning the election.

But this is a different test. She  appears to  have prepared the ground – knowing that it was the alliance with the BJP that  cost her party  dear, she  not only started distancing herself from the saffron party  but also began taking it to task for everything that went wrong in the country. Quite remarkably, she linked the Hindu right wing acts of violence against the minorities to the sense of privilege that they enjoyed under the current dispensation in the country and took on PM Narendra Modi for his silence on these issues as also his ‘negative’ attitude towards Pakistan that is keen on resolving the Kashmir issue. 

She got an opportunity to repair PDP’s ties with Jamat-e-Islami, that was banned by the Centre. The Jamaat was angry with Mehbooba because of what all happened in Kashmir, particularly in the south, in 2016 when there was a spell of anarchy for more than four months.

Mehbooba was the first to protest against the ban and led a protest against the Centre’s action against the religio-political party, a behind-the scene ally of  Mufti Sayeed since his Congress days. When the National Conference,  during its 22-year rented name of ‘Plebiscite Front’,  had boycotted the polls, the Congress persuaded the Jamaat to enter the fray to give legitimacy to the electoral exercise. 

The Jamaat and the NC have had  mutual hatred since the early political innings of  NC founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. Mufti Sayeed, a hardcore anti-NC leader, had even defied the late PM Indira Gandhi in the late seventies, refusing to get grievances redressed by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. The Jamaat cadre would come out to defeat the NC. Their natural choice was the PDP after the Muftis quit the Congress. This election would demonstrate whether or not Mehbooba is able to woo back Jamaat’s latent support.

Within the party, she  has taken upon herself to lead from the front. It is a critical test. No more a familiar terrain, she will be entering unchartered waters. Her victory, if it comes through, will lay the blueprint for the Assembly elections. It is a  rehearsal she is taking quite seriously.