Why PDP is on shaky ground in Kashmir a decade after it rose to power

Fifteen years ago, Raja Waheed joined the Peoples Democratic Party. He worked his way up to the position of vice-president of the party’s unit in Shopian district and in 2020 won the elections to the district development council.

When the date of the Assembly elections to Jammu and Kashmir was announced – the first polls after it was downsized from a state to a Union territory five years ago – the 48-year-old was certain of getting a ticket from the Shopian assembly segment in South Kashmir.

He was in for a shock.

“The party chose a candidate who joined the party in 2021.” He quit. “It’s against my self-respect to be a part of the PDP anymore.”

Waheed is not alone. At least nine prominent leaders, including a former Member of Legislative Assembly, have left the party since the elections to the Union territory were announced – seven in its bastion of South Kashmir.

While a certain degree of churn is inevitable ahead of an election, conversations with leaders and insiders of the party suggest that the Peoples Democratic Party is staring at a crisis.

The party, which formed the last elected government in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir in 2014, has already been enfeebled over the last five years.

In the face of a central government crackdown that followed the abrogation of Article 370, it bled several of its leaders, who quit the party – and went on to join parties seen closer to New Delhi.

The larger concern, however, is that the party’s support base in Kashmir has been eroded by its political choices since 2014. In the recently held Lok Sabha elections, the party failed to win any of the three parliamentary seats in the Valley. “People are not willing to trust it this time because the wounds of the 2019 humiliation are still fresh,” a political observer from Srinagar, who did not want to be identified, told Scroll.

More worryingly, there are other claimants for the space it had staked out for itself in the last decades.

The dissent within

Several elected party members who have quit PDP recently alleged that the decision-making in the party is “undemocratic” and governed by “family concerns” of the party’s high command – a criticism that is often made against its rival National Conference.

For instance, the decision to field Iltija Mufti, the daughter of PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, from the party’s home turf of Srigufwara-Bijbehara assembly constituency in Anantnag, has not gone down well with several party workers. Iltija was chosen over senior leader Abdul Rehman Veeri, who has represented the seat four times.

A member who left the party alleged that the PDP’s command had been hijacked by the family members and relatives of the Mufti family. “Most of the people they have given tickets to come from wealthier backgrounds. Others are either relatives or uncles of those who brush their shoulders with the party’s high command,” said the former party member, asking not to be identified.

He added: “If a four-time MLA-like Veeri can be sidelined to give a safe seat to Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter, what’s my worth in such a party?”

That the party has reopened its doors to leaders who had quit in the aftermath of 2019 crackdown to join other parties, has also left workers disgruntled.

One such worker is Pulwama leader Syed Bari Andrabi, who held firm while party members, including elected legislators, were leaving the party in droves in 2019.

On August 24, Andrabi quit the party, after the party chose to overlook him as a candidate for Rajpora assembly segment.

The PDP’s pick was Syed Bashir Ahmad, a two-time MLA and former minister, who had been expelled from the party in 2014 for his “anti-party activities”. Not just that, in April, Ahmad had joined the Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party, which is seen to be close to New Delhi.

On August 22, Ahmad rejoined PDP in Srinagar. The same day, his candidature was announced.

“I quit the party on a point of principle and not over the ticket,” said Andrabi. “It's not what the party has decided, it’s about the manner in which the decisions are being made. Being the party’s representative in Pulwama, should not I have been taken into confidence while deciding the candidate? I was not.”

He added: “Is this the reward and treatment we deserve for staying in the party when everyone else was leaving?”

According to Andrabi, he did try to raise the issue with the party high command, including Mehbooba Mufti. “There was no convincing explanation from her,” he said.

A similar situation arose in the Tral assembly segment of Pulwama, where the party picked a recently retired government servant, Rafiq Ahmad Naik, as a candidate overlooking the claims of other workers.

“I fail to understand how a person who has just retired from his job became so credible in a single day that they gave mandate to him? What’s his contribution to PDP?” asked Harbaksh Singh, a district development council member from Tral who quit the PDP after the decision to field Naik from the segment.

Singh, who joined PDP in 2013, said: “The D in PDP doesn't stand for democratic but dictatorship.”

A study in contrast

Several observers of Kashmiri politics contrast the current drift to the party’s position a decade ago.

In the 2014 Assembly elections, the Peoples Democratic Party won 28 seats – its best electoral performance since its creation in 1999. Though it was still short of the majority mark of 44 seats by a good margin, it went on to form the government by allying with the Bharatiya Janata Party, a contentious decision that continues to weigh on it.

But after 2019, when Jammu and Kashmir was downgraded into a Union territory, the party found itself in the crosshairs of New Delhi’s strong-arm tactics. Eighteen of its 28 MLAs quit the party.

The PDP’s top leadership and their family members were denied passports. One of the close aides of Mehbooba Mufti, Waheed Ur Rehman Parra, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency and booked under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

Even so, the party tried to renew its relevance. According to one of its members, it was Mehbooba Mufti who was behind the idea of forming the Gupkar Alliance – a collective of mostly regional mainstream political parties, including rival National Conference, that pushed for the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and statehood.

However, with the Supreme Court last year putting its seal of approval on what happened on August 5, 2019, the alliance partners have grown distant.

Earlier this year, the National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party – both members of the nationwide Opposition INDIA alliance – decided to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections separately, marking what many called the death of the Gupkar Alliance.

For the Assembly elections, while the NC has gone on to stitch up an alliance with the Congress, the PDP appears to have been left out in the cold. “The situation is not conducive for PDP,” said the political observer in Kashmir, speaking off the record.

In contrast, the National Conference appears to have weathered the crisis since 2019 better.

According to the second political observer from Srinagar, the disintegration of PDP in the aftermath of 2019 was a testimony to the staying power of the National Conference. “What Congress is to India, National Conference is to Jammu and Kashmir,” he underlined. “It arose from a popular movement to become a mainstream political party. It has a legacy dating back to the 1930s. That’s why we didn’t see NC leaders exiting the party.”

A senior Peoples Democratic Party leader, who declined to be identified, pointed out that the party is struggling with the legacy of its “disastrous” alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014. “Yes. It was a blunder,” he said, “but Kashmiris have forgiven bigger mistakes.”

The 2014 blunder

Nearly three months before the 2014 Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, Peoples Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti ruled out the possibility of allying with the Bharatiya Janata Party in case of a fractured mandate.

“…we would like to keep the faith with the people and with our agenda and we would not want to join hands with a party which, especially after the formation of this new [Union] government, is doing exactly what people were apprehensive about. We can’t go with the BJP,” Mufti told The Indian Express in September 2014.

In its campaigns, the PDP repeatedly invoked the fear of BJP coming to power in Muslim-majority Kashmir valley in case people did not vote in their favour.

“The idea was that BJP has to be kept out at any cost,” explained a senior journalist in Srinagar with more than two decades of experience. “It even targeted the National Conference for being part of the NDA in the past.”

When the votes were counted, the PDP was still short of the majority.

In a U-turn that continues to haunt the party, the Peoples Democratic Party joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party to form a coalition government in March 2015.

This was the first time in the history of Jammu and Kashmir that the Bharatiya Janata Party had risen to power at the state level.

As predicted by many, the government could not complete its tenure. In June 2018, the Bharatiya Janata Party withdrew its support, forcing Mehbooba Mufti to resign from the post of chief minister. Soon after, Governor’s rule was imposed.

More than a year after the collapse of the BJP-PDP coalition government, the Narendra Modi-led Union government scrapped Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under Article 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution and downgraded the erstwhile state into two Union territories.

Many see the withdrawal of BJP’s support to Peoples Democratic Party as a part of the BJP’s game plan. “A view that has become cemented among the people is that PDP allowed BJP to get familiar with the intricacies of Jammu and Kashmir’s administrative setup. People believe they helped BJP in doing the groundwork for scrapping J&K’s special status,” said the second political observer in Srinagar, who asked not to be identified by name.

Rise and fall

But even while in power, the PDP failed to live up to its ideological roots, critics say.

Since it was founded in 1999, the party also brought a discourse of ‘soft-separatism’ to the mainstream by trying to be sensitive to the core grievances of Kashmiris regarding the legitimacy of Indian rule in the disputed region. During its early days, Mufti’s daughter, Mehbooba Mufti, would earn a reputation for visiting the families of slain militants, victims of torture and those illegally detained by security forces.

All of this was palatable to New Delhi. “The creation of PDP had multiple benefits for New Delhi. Firstly, it gave a sense of competitive politics in the region. It also helped direct the anger against New Delhi to local political players rather than the Union government itself," underlined the political expert in Srinagar.

In 2014, however, the party faced a challenge in its bastion. A resurgence was taking place in the South Kashmir belt of the valley. Young, educated impressionable boys were joining militant groups and posting pictures brandishing weapons and military fatigues on social media. The poster boy of this ‘new age militancy’ was popular Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani from Pulwama. In July 2016, Wani was killed in a gunfight with security forces. His killing sparked a mass uprising. The response by security forces killed nearly 100 protesters and left more than 15,000 injured. Kashmir was under curfew for nearly two months.

All of this unfolded during the reign of Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP-BJP coalition government. “PDP’s decision to preside over that uprising led to its decimation,” said the senior journalist. “They did not expect that it would be at the helm of affairs and oversee the slaughter of civilians in 2016.”

New challengers

The senior PDP leader pointed out the fundamental difference between the National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party. “NC works on governance narrative, ours is a resistance narrative.”

What worries PDP leaders more, however, is that there are other, more credible contenders to this narrative.

The success of the rag-tag party of jailed mainstream leader Abdul Rashid Sheikh aka Engineer Rashid in the just-concluded Lok Sabha elections is a case in point.

Riding on a sympathy wave for being in jail and his confrontational politics in the past, Rashid went on to defeat Omar Abdullah from Baramulla constituency. While Rashid remains in jail, his victory has infused new life in his nascent Awami Itehad Party.

“The bigger threat to our ideology is not the National Conference but Engineer Rashid,” another PDP leader remarked. At least two of its elected leaders who left the PDP in South Kashmir have joined Rashid’s party.