Baramulla's Split Votes May Lead to Surprises in Lok Sabha Race

Baramulla: The split in the ethnic Pahari and Gujjar and Shia Muslim vote may spring up some remarkable surprises in Baramulla, the Lok Sabha constituency spread over eighteen Assembly segments in the border districts of Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipore and part of the Budgam district of Jammu and Kashmir.

Baramulla which has a total electorate of over 17.15 lakh including forty thousand first-time voters will go to the polls on Monday in the fifth phase of the seven-season Parliamentary elections.

Though there are as many as 22 candidates in the fray, the constituency is in realty witnessing a triangular fight between National Conference (NC) candidate and former chief minister Omar Abdullah, J&K People’s Conference (JKPC) chairman Sajad Ahmed Lone and Sheikh Abdur Rashid of the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP). The People's Democratic Party (PDP) has fielded former Rajya Sabha member Fayaz Ahmed Mir from Baramulla, but he seems to be nowhere in the race among the chief contestants.

BJP which is not contesting on any of the three Lok Sabha seats in the predominantly Muslim Kashmir Valley and Pir Panjal region of J&K is both overtly and covertly campaigning for Mr. Lone who served as a minister from the saffron party’s quota in the PDP-BJP coalition governments in the erstwhile J&K state.

He has received support also from vast sections of the J&K’s one million Pahari speaking community apparently in reciprocation to the Narendra Modi government’s granting Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to it through a legislation in February this year. However, Gujjars who together with nomadic Bakarwals comprise about 15 percent of the erstwhile state’s population are unhappy with the move as they think it will dilute their reservation rights. The NC is hoping to bag maximum number of Gujjar and Bakarwal votes in Baramulla and also in Anantnag-Rajouri-Poonch constituency where voting will take place on May 25 and where it has fielded popular Gujjar leader and former minister Mian Altaf Ahmed as its candidate.

The Shia vote is also going to split mainly between Mr. Abdullah and Mr. Lone. Baramulla has about 133, 000 registered Shias voters. While Shia cleric and politician Imran Raza Ansari is reported to be quite sure that his “committed” 37,000 more Shia supporters from among the voters will favour his friend and party colleague Mr. Lone in this election, Mr. Abdullah is hopeful of getting almost all remaining Shia votes. His candidature is being supported by, at least, three influential Shia families of the Valley. Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, his party colleague and former minister, belongs to one of these families -the Agas of Budgam-who himself is leaps and bounds ahead of his rivals in the Srinagar constituency.

In the last days of campaigning in Baramulla, AIP chief and former independent MLA Sheikh Rashid, popularly known as Engineer Rashid, stirred up the Baramulla fray with huge crowds, mainly youth and first-time voters, rallying behind his sons who are campaigning for him in his absence. Apparently swayed by his popularity, Ghulam Nabi Azad’s Democratic Progressive Azad Party too has declared its support for him.

Mr. Rashid,56, has been lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail since August 2019 when the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested him in an alleged money laundering and terror funding case. He has, however, denied his involvement in anti-national activities including terror funding and said that the charges levelled against him are “absolutely fake and irrelevant” and that he is being “victimized” only for his political belief.

He had stunned everyone by polling 101,500 votes as an independent candidate in the last Lok Sabha election from Baramulla. He was 31,192 votes behind the NC’s winning candidate Muhammad Akbar Lone and polled just 827 votes less than the JKPC candidate. His supporters are hopeful of him polling a much higher number of votes than he previously got.

From all available indications, he is likely to cut ice mainly in the Langate-Handwara-Kupwara belt of the constituency traditionally considered as JKPC bastions. But the intelligence reports that he will share mainly from the votes which were earlier expected to go in Mr. Lone’s kitty has, party insiders say, worried the BJP leadership. Mr. Lone's critics publicly call him the saffron party’s ‘trojan horse’ in Kashmir. Reacting to Mr. Abdullah’s charge that he is a “proxy” candidate of the BJP, Mr. Lone had recently said that the former chief minister should either prove it or tender a public apology. But the BJP’s leadership in J&K makes no bones about calling him a trusted friend, which, the Kashmir watchers say, may prove politically disadvantageous for him in many ways.