NC, PDP field underdogs in Srinagar: Budgam’s Ruhullah is a slain Congress leader’s son; Pulwama’s Para an accused in UAPA case

SRINAGAR: For the first time after 1996, Jammu and Kashmir’s conventional ruling parties, National Conference (NC) and Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), have given a chance to rural underdogs in the capital constituency of Srinagar. While the NC candidate, 46-year-old Aga Ruhullah, is the son of a slain Congress leader from Budgam, PDP’s Waheedur Rehman Para (34) is a greenhorn from Pulwama—a hotbed of militancy and bastion of the pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami.
Elites and dynasts have otherwise monopolised contests and victories in most of the Parliamentary elections in Srinagar ever since 1967. This is for the first time after 1996 that no member of the conventional ruling families, no political stalwart is in the fray in Srinagar.
Twenty-four candidates, including Aga and Para, are trying their luck in the constituency of 18 segments—8 urban and 10 rural—which is now spread over the districts of Srinagar, Ganderbal and Pulwama. In the recent delimitation, this constituency has retained the Budgam district’s Khansaheb, Chadoura and Chrar-e-Sharief segments though Budgam and Beerwah have been removed and merged with Baramulla-Kupwara.
South Kashmir’s Assembly segment of Shopian has also been clubbed with Srinagar where polling will be conducted in the fourth phase on the 13th of May.
Aga joined the NC a year after his father Aga Syed Mehdi was assassinated by terrorists in an IED blast in November 2000 along with his two personal security officers and a driver from J&K Police besides two of his civilian supporters. He was returned from Budgam on the NC ticket for the J&K Legislative Assembly in 2002, 2008 and 2014. He also served as a Minister in Omar Abdullah’s cabinet from 2009 to 2014.
However, Aga is now contesting his political career’s first election for the Indian Parliament. He comes from Budgam’s influential Aga family which has provided religious leadership to the valley’s Shia Muslims in the last over 200 years and produced a number of political leaders.
Before Aga Ruhullah, his close relative Aga Syed Mehmood has served as the NC’s MLA from Pattan in 1987-90. He served as a Minister of State in Dr Farooq Abdullah’s NC-Congress government from 1987 to 1989. In 1996, Aga Mehmood was returned from Beerwah and inducted again as MoS in the NC’s Farooq Abdullah government.
Aga Ruhullah’s father, Aga Mehdi, contested unsuccessfully as an independent candidate from Budgam in 1987. Later, he contested his first Lok Sabha election from Budgam in 1998 but lost to NC’s Farooq Abdullah. In the Assembly elections of 1977, Aga Ruhullah’s uncle, Aga Syed Hassan, contested unsuccessfully on the Janata Party ticket from Budgam.
Aga’s arch rival, Waheedur Rehman Para, was booked and arrested in a case of terror funding in 2020. Facing charges of links to militants, Para remained in jail for over a year before he was released on bail from an anti-terror jail. Before joining the PDP under Mufti Sayeed’s leadership in 2014, Para functioned as the only Kashmiri member of Ram Jethmalani’s ‘Kashmir Committee-II’.
According to media reports, Para had visited Pakistan and interviewed a number of the separatist-militant leaders, including the Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin in 2007. This entire stuff was telecast on Para’s Pulwama-based cable TV channel. He played a key role in the campaigning for several PDP leaders, including Haseeb Drabu, in the Assembly elections of 2014.
Para also remained on the forefront of Mehbooba Mufti’s campaign and cadre mobilisation in the by-election for Assembly in June 2016. According to him, his father was a diehard NC activist.
Para successfully contested the District Development Council (DDC) election in Pulwama from jail. However, facing charges of terror funding he was never sworn in and permitted to function in the DDC.
In the Lok Sabha elections, Srinagar has been won or lost by giants like ex-Prime Minister Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad, Shamim Ahmad Shamim, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah's wife Begum Akbar Jehan, ex-Chief Ministers Dr Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah and the prominent Shia cleric-politician Maulvi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari.
Politicians as well as political analysts attribute today’s largescale engagement of the youth with the Indian elections in Srinagar to the younger age and persona of the key contestants.
They carry along hordes of the youths including the first time voters. There’s no major generation gap, no class variance between the key contestants and the electors. Both the key candidates run a part of their campaigns through social media. Both are remarkably active on Twitter and Facebook pages.
Para insists that the involvement of the youth with the democratic process this time is ubiquitous in all the five constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir.
“August 2019 has drastically changed the situation. The separatist militancy has gone to the backburner. Their narrative has been neutralised. In all electoral campaigns before 2019, we felt ourselves in an alien land. We felt ourselves excommunicated from our society. Today, there are no barriers. All the hate has been replaced by love. This is unprecedented after 1984”, Para told The News Now.
Both Aga and Para are competing on the same ground-- hardline posturing against the BJP-led, Modi-led Union Government, against the abrogation of Article 370 and 35-A and reorganisation of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir which they sum up as "disempowerment of the Kashmiris". They invariably call the current elections a "referendum".
Interestingly, however, both the key contestants are equally trying to get the maximum of the so-called sentiment vote—of the people who once struggled for Azadi but are now speaking about safeguarding the "dignity, identity and empowerment of the Kashmiris within the Indian Constitution".

Updated On 5/7/2024 12:23:29 AM