Srinagar: Jailed parliamentarian Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) is set to field around three dozen candidates in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections, potentially turning them into a four-cornered contest and adding uncertainty about the nature of the mandate. Multiple politicians across party lines whom ThePrint spoke to are of the view that a multi-cornered contest raises the prospect of a fractured verdict, which may result in President’s Rule being continued and an elected government eluding the people even after six years.
Given how Rashid galvanised the youth in the Lok Sabha elections, the AIP’s large-scale entry into the electoral fray in the Kashmir Valley threatens to upset the electoral calculations of mainstream parties such as the National Conference (NC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which have traditionally held sway in the region. It suits the Jammu-centric Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but its leaders are wary of the prospect of separatist elements gaining electoral legitimacy in the process.
Sheikh Abdul Rashid, popularly known as ‘Engineer’ Rashid, has been in Tihar jail under terror funding charges since 2019. In the Lok Sabha elections this year, the ex-MLA trumped former J&K chief minister and NC vice president Omar Abdullah in the Baramulla constituency in absentia. His 22-year-old son, Abrar Rashid, an MSc (botany) student, led the campaign with the slogan “Tihar ka badla, vote say“. Rashid defeated Abdullah by over 2 lakh votes, with J&K People’s Conference (PC) leader Sajjad Lone finishing third.
Rashid’s AIP is now seeking to build on its Lok Sabha poll momentum in the assembly elections even as the Independent MP remains in jail waiting for bail. His brother, Sheikh Khursheed, has resigned his government job as a teacher and is likely to contest. The party finalised nine candidates last week.
“We will field around 30-35 candidates who will be mostly young intellectual faces with no political background. They will offer a new alternative to the people,” Abrar Rashid told ThePrint. Among the nine faces selected so far are doctors and Ph.D. scholars.
“My father’s candidature resulted in a huge youth mobilization. The youth came out to participate in elections. They rejected 70 years of dictatorship and dynastic politics,” said Abrar. He has become the face of the party in his father’s absence but does not hold any organisational post, and can’t contest as he is underage. The AIP will contest largely in the Valley, with two-three candidates in Jammu region.
AIP leaders exude confidence that the party will end up winning more than 20 of the 47 seats in the Valley. If that holds true, it will severely undermine the regional parties’ bid to reclaim power in the Union territory. The NC and the Congress—which led in 36 and seven assembly segments respectively in the Lok Sabha elections—have gone into an alliance, shutting the door for Mehbooba Mufti, whose PDP led in only five assembly segments.
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‘Possibility of many separatists becoming MLAs’
How Rashid’s party performs in this election will have a bearing on the BJP’s strategy to get its first chief minister in J&K, according to party sources. It led in 29 assembly seats in Jammu region in the Lok Sabha elections and hopes to maintain, if not better, this tally in the coming assembly polls. Around eight to nine Independent MLAs may win and go with the BJP, a senior BJP functionary told ThePrint, clarifying that he was not talking about the MLAs of Lone’s PC or Altaf Bukhari’s Apni Party—the two that are commonly seen as potential BJP allies.
These three parties did not field candidates against each other in the last Lok Sabha elections, lending credence to the buzz in political circles about them having a tacit understanding. If the Apni Party and the PC manage to get even half-a-dozen MLAs, the BJP along with the Independents may come close to the majority mark of 46 in the 90-member assembly. The BJP functionary quoted above, however, conceded that it was the party leadership’s “khyalipulao” and these arithmetical calculations were based on “wishes, not reality”.
A central BJP leader active in J&K said: “It was not for nothing that Rashid was able to file his nomination papers from jail. The party (BJP) leadership didn’t expect that instead of benefiting Sajjad Lone, he would go on to become an MP. If we again start believing that Rashid’s party will help by hurting Omar or Mehbooba, we should also factor in the possibility of many separatists becoming MLAs in the assembly. That will create a much larger problem.”
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A moving column by Shri Sankarshan Thakur on what has created the phenomenon of Engineer Rashid. Telegraph.