PDP suffers worst electoral result since its formation 25 years back
The party, which formed its first government in 2002 just three years after former chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed formed it, faces a second successive electoral rout
The People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which emerged as the single-largest party in the 2014 Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) polls and led the government in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) until 2018, is set to suffer its worst electoral result since its formation 25 years back in 1999.
The party, which formed its first government with the Congress’s help in 2002 just three years after former chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed formed it in 1999, faces a second successive electoral rout since this summer. The PDP was leading on just two seats while its arch-rival National Conference (NC) was ahead on 42 of 90 seats. The NC-Congress alliance appeared set to form the first government in J&K since it was stripped of its semi-autonomous status and divided into two Union territories with the nullification of the Constitution’s Article 370 in 2019. It was leading on 52 seats while the BJP was ahead on 27 seats.
The loss of PDP chief and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter, Iltija Mufti, in their family bastion of Bijbehara added insult to the injury. This comes months after the PDP was unable to win any seats in the national polls. The PDP got just 8.45% of the votes in the Lok Sabha elections. The NC won two of the three Lok Sabha seats in the Kashmir Valley with a vote share of 22.2%. Mehbooba Mufti lost by 181,000 votes from Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha seat.
In the 2024 assembly polls, the PDP also faced stiff competition from the Jamaat-e-Islami-backed independent candidates in its stronghold of South Kashmir. Jamaat-e-Islami, which was banned in 2019, was believed to have backed the PDP previously.
The PDP’s support base began to erode in 2016 when it drew much flak for the killings of scores of civilians amid protests following the gunning down of Hizbul Mujahideen’s Burhan Wani. The killings fuelled anger over the PDP’s alliance with the BJP.
The scrapping of the region’s semi-autonomous status and statehood, lockdown for months, suspension of internet services, and detention of top political leaders added to the resentment in the Valley. The PDP was blamed partly for this due to its alliance with the BJP even though their tie-up ended a year earlier.
Mehbooba Mufti and the PDP were ironically blamed for atrocities post-2016 even as she gained popularity by leading protests against the alleged high-handedness in counter-insurgency operations in the early noughties.
Waheed-ur-Rehman Para, who was one of the two PDP candidates set to win their assembly seats, acknowledged their alliance with the BJP was suicidal. “It was an alliance of two parallel lines. But its motive was not government formation but to soothe the pain of Kashmiris and start a dialogue between Delhi and Srinagar,” he said during the assembly poll campaigning.
