All eyes on Srinagar—NC’s traditional stronghold

NC’s Aga Ruhullah and PDP’sPara key contestants

Srinagar: With as many as 24 candidates in the fray, the Central Kashmir constituency of Srinagar is heading for a key contest between Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference (NC), Mehbooba Mufti’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Altaf Bukhari’s Apni Party (AP) in the current Lok Sabha elections.
As the polling date of 13 May is drawing close, the three contestants—NC’s Aga Ruhullah, PDP’s Waheedur Rehman Para and AP’s Mohammad Ashraf Mir—have intensified their campaigning across the constituency of over 17 Lakh registered voters.
Unlike in many elections in the past, the militants have not been able to disrupt the democratic exercise by any threats or executions this year. For the first time since 1989, there are no boycott calls either from the militants or the Hurriyat Conference and other separatist organisations.
For electoral politics, Srinagar has been the NC’s traditional stronghold for the last over 45 years. Previously it comprised the three Central Kashmir districts of Srinagar, Ganderbal and Budgam.
In the recent delimitation, this principal constituency has been drastically reorganised. Two segments of the Budgam district—Budgam and Beerwah—have been taken away and clubbed with the North Kashmir constituency of Baramulla-Kupwara. All the four Assembly segments of Pulwama district—Pulwama, Rajpora, Pampore and Tral—besides the Shopian segment of the Shopian district in South Kashmir have been merged with Srinagar.
Now this Lok Sabha constituency is broadly divided into three zones—8 urban segments of the capital city of Srinagar, 5 rural segments of Ganderbal-Budgam and 5 rural segments of South Kashmir.
The erstwhile Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency, comprising the capital Srinagar district, included all the areas which are now under the territorial jurisdiction of the two satellite districts of Budgam and Ganderbal.
Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, who served as the Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir from 1953 to 1964, was elected as the Lok Sabha member from Srinagar in the first Parliamentary elections in 1967. However, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s Plebiscite Front, which did not participate in the elections, supported the independent candidate Shamim Ahmad Shamim in the 1971 Lok Sabha elections. Shamim defeated Bakshi and represented Srinagar in the Lok Sabha.
Since 1977, the Lok Sabha elections have been held twelve times in Srinagar. The NC lost only once—in 2014 when the PDP’s Tariq Hamid Karra defeated Farooq Abdullah. In 1996, Ghulam Mohammad Mir Magami of the Congress was elected as the NC did not participate in the Lok Sabha elections. In 8 of the remaining 10 elections which were won by the NC, the party’s winning candidates were members of Sheikh Abdullah’s family.
While the NC’s Begum Akbar Jehan, who was Sheikh Abdullah’s wife, was returned in 1977, her son Farooq Abdullah was returned unopposed in 1980. He was subsequently returned in the Lok Sabha general elections of 2009 and 2019 as also in the by-elections of 2017. His son Omar Abdullah was returned from Srinagar in 1998, 1999 and 2004.
The NC founder Sheikh Abdullah was elected for the Legislative Assembly with a massive mandate from Ganderbal when he returned to mainstream politics in 1975. He was again elected from Ganderbal in the Assembly elections of 1977. Farooq Abdullah was returned from the same Assembly segment in 1983, 1987 and 1996. In 2008, he was returned for the Assembly from Hazratbal and Sonwar.
After Farooq was returned for the Lok Sabha in 2009 and he resigned from the Assembly, his brother Dr Mustafa Kamal was elected in the by-elections from Hazratbal and the NC candidate Yasin Shah from Sonwar. Omar was returned from Ganderbal in 2008 and from Beerwah in 2014.
Even when the NC was not in power, it defeated the then Chief Minister Ghulam Mohammad Shah’s son, Muzaffar Shah, with a massive margin in Srinagar in the Lok Sabha elections of 1984. While the NC's AR Kabuli got 3,67,249 votes, CM's son polled a total of 80,972.
In Srinagar, the NC suffered the first electoral setback in the Assembly elections of 2002 when it was defeated by the PDP, Congress and independent candidates in 7 key segments—Amirakadal, Zadibal, Habbakadal, Chadoura, Beerwah, Khansahab and Ganderbal. In 2008, it retrieved all the four segments in Srinagar and Ganderbal but again lost three in Budgam—Chadoura, Beerwah and Khansahab.
In 2014, the NC suffered the history’s worst setback in Srinagar when it was defeated by PDP on 7 seats—five in Srinagar and two in Budgam—and by independent Hakeem Yasin in Khansaheb. It also lost in the Lok Sabha elections.
However, the NC retrieved Srinagar in the Lok Sabha by-elections of 2017 as also in the general elections of 2019 when Farooq Abdullah won his fourth election for Lok Sabha.
The electoral dynamics have changed drastically in Srinagar with the deletion of Budgam and Beerwah segments which were a stronghold for the NC and the inclusion of Shopian, Rajpora, Pulwama, Pampore and Tral.
The five South Kashmir segments have given substantial votes to the PDP which retained the same in the Assembly elections of 2002, 2008 and 2014. The PDP candidate Waheedur Rehman Para is tapping the party’s conventional vote-bank in the five South Kashmir segments which also have a thick concentration of the followers of Jamaat-e-Islami.
On the other hand, NC’s Aga Ruhullah is pinning his hopes on the five rural segments of Kangan, Ganderbal, Khansahab, Chadoura and Chrar-e-Sharief. In addition to the NC’s committed vote, he has the advantage of a substantial chunk of Shia Muslim electorate in this area as also in the capital city.
The Apni Party candidate, Mohammad Ashraf Mir, a former PDP MLA and Minister, has also a good number of followers in Srinagar’s Sonwar segment. However, much depends on the voter turnout in Srinagar which has been remarkably low in all elections after 1987.

Updated On 5/5/2024 4:22:34 AM