Anantnag:The Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha constituency has witnessed an extended and vigorous campaigning by Jammu and Kashmir’s two major political parties -National Conference (NC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which are pitted against each other in a triangular contest. While the NC is trying to retain the seat, PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti is making a hard push in a constituency she represented in 2014-2016.
The third candidate who has succeeded in making forays in certain pockets of the constituency spread over eighteen Assembly segments- 11 in Kashmir Valley’s Anantnag, Kulgam and Shopian districts and 7 across the Pir Panjal ridge in the twin border districts of Rajouri and Poonch - is J&K Apni Party, another regional entity.
The J&K Apni Party is being officially supported by the BJP which is not contesting any of the three Lok Sabha seats in the predominantly Muslim Kashmir Valley and Pir Panjal region of the Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir.
Both the Apni Party and its ally expect the electorate belonging to J&K’s one million Pahari speaking community will support its candidate Zaffar Iqbal Khan Manhas, a former government servant and himself a Pahari. The Pahari leadership has been all praise for Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Centre granted Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the ethnic community through a legislation in February this year. Mr. Manhas and his party hope and believe that the Paharis who hold sway in a few Assembly segments of the constituency will repay by voting in favour of a party which is in close relationship with the BJP and whose leader Syed Altaf Bukhari is being publicly owned by the saffron party as being its “trusted friend.”
But the downside of it is that the Centre’s move has alienated J&K’s Gujjar-Bakarwal community despite the assurances from no less a person than Home Minister Amit Shah himself that it will not dilute the reservation rights they have been enjoying since 1991 when they were granted ST status along with most of the Ladakhi ethnic groups.
The Gujjar-Bakarwal vote continues be monolith in the Rajouri-Poonch even after almost entire region was detached from the Jammu Lok Sabha constituency and incorporated into the Kashmir Valley’s Anantnag-Kulgam-Shopian, a largely Kashmiri speaking belt, after the delimitation. The demographic change has added layers of political complexities to the constituency with Pahari-Gujjar- Bakarwal and Kashmiri speaking populations dimensions. The NC has played its cards smartly by fielding popular Gujjar leader and former minister Mian Altaf Ahmed as its candidate which it believes will turn tables on its opponents.
PDP president Mehbooba Mufti is trying to give a tough fight to Mr. Ahmed both in the Kashmir Valley and Pir Panjal region. She has toured extensively in the Pir Panjal region and tried to gain the sympathy of the Gujjar-Bakarwal community by telling them that she always supported their rights on forest land and opposed all attempts made to evict them from their traditional habitat post-August 2019.She also tells them how she took up the cudgels with her partners in the BJP and forced two of its ministers to quit after their publicly supporting the perpetrators of rape and murder of an 8-yer-old Gujjar girl in J&K’s Kathua district in April 2018.
However, local political watchers say that she may succeed in getting only small numbers of Gujjar and Bakarwal votes whereas Mr. Altaf is surely going to emerge as a big beneficiary of the ethnic community’s choice at the hustings. As far as the Kashmiri speaking vote is concerned, it will split mainly between Ms. Mufti and Mr. Ahmed. If Ms. Mufti will perform better in some of the Assembly segments of Anantnag-Kulgam-Shopian belt, it is her charismatic daughter Iltia Mufti who too should be given the credit for it for she has been burning the midnight oil by holding roadshows and public and indoor meeting to seek votes for her mother, the local watchers say.
Anantnag-Rajouri was scheduled to go to voting on May 7, but the Election Commission of India (ECI), citing connectivity issues set off by inclement weather as the reason, deferred it till May 25 when the sixth phase of the seven-season elections is scheduled to be held across the country.
The constituency has 1,830,294 registered electorate including 81,189 first-time voters and there are as many as 20 candidates in fray. E
