Amid rising discontent, Mehbooba’s party is threatening to unravel as it loses senior leaders to rivals.
New Delhi: Mehbooba Mufti, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief, is facing an uphill and unenviable task.
As resignations of several seniors pour in, with some switching over to rival parties, the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister is now confronted with growing dissent and questions over her leadership and the very survival of her party.
Six months after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) unceremoniously broke its three-and-a-half-year-old alliance with the PDP in the state on 19 June, leading to the fall of the government, Mehbooba is witnessing her party unravel.
Five senior leaders of the PDP — Basharat Bukhari, Peer Mohammad Hussain, Imran Raza Ansari, Abid Ansari and Haseeb Drabu — have quit so far, besides Tariq Hami Karra, who resigned in 2016. The party is facing an internal crisis and the existing turmoil indicates that Mehbooba has a huge challenge on her hands if she has to plug the leaks in the PDP boat.
On Wednesday, Bukhari and Hussain joined Omar Abdullah’s National Conference. A day before their formal entry into the NC, the PDP released a statement saying the two were “expelled” for “anti-party activities”.
“It is difficult for her (Mehbooba) as people are leaving. Given the turbulence, the PDP might not do well in elections. Therefore, its leaders are going for greener pastures. They are securing their future. Whether the PDP will be able to come out of this difficulty, we will have to wait and watch. Within the party, they know they have lost a lot of ground,” a senior political analyst of the Valley, Noor Ahmed Baba, told ThePrint, adding: “I am not suggesting it is the end of the PDP but much would depend on the leadership and its efforts in managing the situation.”
Dismantling of the party
The PDP, which was floated in 1999, captured power in the 2002 J&K assembly elections, winning 16 seats. Its patron, Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, headed the PDP-Congress coalition between 2002 and 2005. The Congress’ Ghulam Nabi Azad took over the CM mantle as part of a rotation agreement till 2008.
In 2014, the PDP was the single largest party and bagged 28 seats in a House of 87. The move to enter what critics termed an “unholy alliance” with the BJP became a gamechanger for the party.
The first dent in the party came when its founding members and senior leader, Tariq Hamid Karra, tendered his resignation in September 2016 after the ground situation turned fragile following the killing of Hizbul Mujahhideen commander Burhan Wani in July that year.
Karra, who joined the Congress later, said the party is slowly being “decimated”.
“The PDP is mentally decimated. Now the physical decimation is taking place… There are only five or six people who will remain with her (Mehbooba), including her family,” Karra told ThePrint.
“Kashmir was burning with killings, maiming and jailing. We were agitating against these things when the NC was in power and we repeated the same,” he said.
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Leadership crisis
The PDP’s core support at the grassroots exists in South Kashmir where Mufti Sayeed’s ancestral village is located in Anantnag’s Bijbehara. In the 2014 Lok Sabha and assembly elections, South Kashmir witnessed tremendous voting. Mehbooba is known for building the PDP by reaching out to people house by house in the region.
However, her own Lok Sabha constituency, Anantnag, is burning today. With the law and order situation in a downward spiral after the killing of Burhan Wani, and a new local militancy taking root in the region, the Anantnag bypolls have become the longest delayed since 1996, and the seat continues to be vacant.
A senior PDP leader who did not wish to be named said Mehbooba’s leadership quality has been put to test. “She is failing in providing leadership at this juncture,” he told ThePrint.
“Mehbooba no more continues to be an undisputed leader. Holding the party together requires much more seasoned political leadership,” said Baba.
Senior PDP leader Naeem Akhtar defended Mehbooba, and said the party “will not disappear from the scene”.
“When Mufti sahab launched PDP, a new recruitment started where he created a new space for people like me. Basharat Bukhari, Altaf Bukhari and Haseeb Drabu would have not been in politics if there was no Mufti sahab and this space. For 19 years of its existence, PDP remained in power for around 10 years,” Akhtar told ThePrint.
He added that Mehbooba will continue to be the party’s face: “Mufti sahab needed a Mehbooba Mufti to make the party acceptable to the state. The only person who is leading it after him is Mehbooba.”
Sources said those who quit had differences with Akhtar, who is considered close to Mehbooba.
Akhtar alleged that the NC was “poaching” members from the PDP. “If a party that has been around for 80 years is poaching on someone who has been there for 18 years, it is a question mark on them,” he said while referring to the NC.
The NC said it was free to take leaders thrown out by Mehbooba herself. “The party (PDP) is facing a ripple effect of what it has done to the state. They have left it in a total mess. Within PDP, they are questioning her (Mehbooba’s) authority… I won’t be surprised if ask her to step down from the position of president,” NC provincial president Nasir Sogami told ThePrint.
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The ‘suicidal’ BJP tie-up
After the fractured mandate of the 2014 Assembly elections, the PDP formed the government with the BJP, which got 25 seats.
Mehbooba recently described the decision as “suicide” for her party, but said that her father did it to serve the interest of people who had voted for the saffron party in the state.
Karra pointed out that the PDP lost crucial space when they went for the tie-up. “We became a buffer between the separatists and nationalists… We surrendered that buffer space by joining the BJP, and the moment we did, the PDP’s future was written on the wall,” Karra said.
“Our commitment was that we have to stop the nefarious designs perpetrated by the RSS-BJP combine with regard to J&K, its special position, the guarantees bestowed upon us by the Constitution of India. Mehbooba, Mufti Syeed and I went to people asking for votes against the BJP. Tying up with the same forces was a betrayal to the mandate,” he added.
Akhtar admitted that the alliance with the BJP cost the PDP. “The PDP is bearing the brunt in a major way. The BJP did not do its bit. It backed out of all its commitments.. We did not get a single day of peace but we delivered many things in ways of development and new initiatives. At the ground level, our workers and voters had grouses,” he said.
“The biggest jerk to the PDP was when BJP unceremoniously sacked them. The party was pushed in a difficult situation,” Baba told ThePrint.
He said the mistrust between the two former allies grew after Mufti Sayeed’s death in January 2016. “Mufti Syeed’s death was the biggest setback for the party. In the process, the party has considerably weakened. Public image has also been damaged,” Baba explained.
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Damage control
Fissures within the PDP became evident after its alliance with the BJP ended. Six MLAs, including Imran Raza Ansari, who is a prominent Shia leader, publicly criticised Mehbooba saying the PDP was a family-run party. Eventually, Mehbooba dropped her brother and two uncles from the organisational set-up.
Others who slammed her functioning included former MLAs Javaid Baig, Abdul Majeed Paddar, Mohammad Abbaas Wani, Abid Ansari, and former MLCs Yasir Reshi and Saifuddin Bhat.
In September, Mehbooba tried to pacify Haseeb Drabu, Mufti Sayeed’s confidante and key negotiator between the PDP and the BJP, by nominating him for membership of the party’s top decision-making body, the political affairs committee. But the move backfired as Drabu went public with his rejection of the offer, and termed her attempt at “reorganising and reconstituting” the PDP “appeasement than atonement”.
Last month, one of the PDP’s founding members and Lok Sabha MP from Baramullah constituency in North Kashmir, Muzaffar Hussain Baig, said he would “seriously consider” joining a third front led by Peoples Conference leader Sajad Lone. After his rebellion, Mehbooba made Baig the “party patron”.
Boycotting the urban local body polls was seen as an attempt by Mehbooba to fix her damaged image during the PDP-BJP rule in the Muslim-dominated Valley.
Sources said Mehbooba has been trying to stop the PDP’s “disintegration” by approaching the intelligence establishment and national parties in New Delhi. “Many PDP leaders have approached to join Congress party. They are out to join any party now. Mehbooba is reaching out to everyone in Delhi to stop this disintegration of PDP,” said a Congress source.
A very decent woman. Father and daughter knew the potential costs of the alliance, but one would say they were not being power hungry when they entered into it. It was the only way forward for Kashmir when the government was formed. Mehboobaji obviously lacked her father’s experience and stature. Even so, given a genuine desire to respect the Agenda for Alliance and to use this unusual, unlikely coalition with vision and statesmanship, peace and normalcy could have returned to the Valley, opening a small window with Pakistan as well. One hopes the lady will be able to stabilise her party, ride out a spell in opposition, for the next state government will be of the Congress and the NC.