Year 2019 Testing Time For Kashmir’s Dynasty Politics

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Forces
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Srinagar: Come January 2019 and for at least four months,  Kashmir will see a massive political happenings with four major parties having roots in their dynasty all set to lock horns. Political observers told KNO that the new year and the new politics would be great to watch.

“While BJP will struggle to stay in power in Jammu and Kashmir, NC, PDP and the Congress will leave no stone unturned to gain the lost ground,” said an observer.

He said that what remains to be see is that is the poll plank these parties would use to lure votes from the people who seem to be ditched by all parties.

The Abdullahs, Muftis, Lones and Ansaris—are trying hard to prove to each other that they have risen on Kashmir’s political landscape without a godfather.

National Conference is Jammu and Kashmir’s oldest political party. In the 1930s it was formed as J&K Muslim Conference which was rechristened as National Conference by the late 1930s.

Since its inception, the party’s tallest leader late Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah spearheaded the political campaigns.

On 9 August 1953, he was unceremoniously dismissed as ‘prime minister’ and thrown into jail for years. Farooq Abdullah is currently the party’s president while the junior Abdullah functions as vice-president.

The case is no different for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which was founded by late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in the late 1990s.

Saeed became the face of the party with an interesting party symbol (pen and inkpot), green cloth, and a soft-resistance ‘self-rule’ slogan, all helped him to gain a foothold in governance politics and he became Chief Minister of the state twice.

After Saeed’s passing away in January 2016, his daughter Mehbooba Mufti took over as the state’s Chief Minister.

She is currently the president of her party after the BJP broke its alliance with the PDP in June 2018.

The BJP, which campaigned in Kashmir during 2014 Assembly elections, would often take a dig at both the NC and PDP for being dynastic political families like the Congress party.

Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned this a few times in his public speeches to make a point that the people of Kashmir deserved a change.

And this ‘change’ turned out to be yet another dynastic family of Kashmir—the Lones. Sajad Lone, however, will be interesting to watch as to how he would grab as much as possible seats.(KNO)

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