While party chief Mehbooba Mufti will contest from Anantnag-Rajouri, youth leader Waheed ur Rehman Parra will be in the fray from Srinagar and veteran Fayaz Ahmad Mir will lead the charge in Baramulla.
After failing to reach an agreement with its INDIA bloc ally National Conference (NC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Sunday fielded candidates from all three seats in the Kashmir Valley on Sunday. The decision of the PDP, which had been pushing for at least one seat from Kashmir, came almost a week after the NC fielded candidates from the constituencies. It also raises the question about who the Congress will back in the Valley.
While former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti will be in the fray from Anantnag-Rajouri, the party’s youth leader Waheed ur Rehman Parra will be in the fray from Srinagar. The PDP has nominated former Rajya Sabha MP Fayaz Ahmad Mir, who recently returned to the party fold, as its candidate from Baramulla.
“I would have announced a young candidate (from Anantnag) but Delhi has focused all its efforts on south Kashmir. I am a fighter and accept the challenge. I appeal to all Kashmiri, our Gujjar and Pahari brothers as well as Sikh and Hindu brothers to send that voice which would represent them without fear to Parliament,” Mufti said while announcing her candidature.
She also made it clear that the PDP would support the Congress, its INDIA bloc ally, in Jammu and reiterated that she was looking to ally with the NC but was forced to go solo after its leaders publicly questioned the “PDP’s existence”. She said, “We had left the decision to Farooq Abdullah. We would not mind even if they had contested all the seats but they should have at least consulted us. They should not have demeaned our party and workers by saying they will see our behaviour in the Lok Sabha polls before deciding on the alliance for the Assembly elections.”
Mufti also hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for referring to the Congress manifesto as the “Muslim League manifesto”, saying that while the grand old party talks of jobs, farmers’ welfare, and stipends to youth, the BJP keeps “repeating Pakistan” as they have nothing else to say.
Here are the PDP’s three candidates:
Mehbooba Mufti
The former Jammu and Kashmir CM is the glue that binds the PDP together. The 64-year-old is the first and only woman CM of the erstwhile state and is credited with reviving the political fortunes of her father and former CM Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
The PDP chief began her career with the Congress and was elected as an MLA from Bijbehara in south Kashmir for the first time in 1996 – the first polls in the Valley after the 1987 Assembly elections, which were marred by allegations of widespread rigging.
She then quit the Congress with her father and floated the PDP where her “soft separatism” and reach among people is believed to be the reason for the party gaining acceptability, especially in south Kashmir.
When the PDP first came to power in 2002, Mehbooba was elected as MLA from Pahalgam. In 2004, she won the parliamentary polls from Anantnag (as the constituency was then called) and in the Assembly elections four years later, she won from Wachi in Shopian.
In 2009, Mehbooba replaced her father at the helm of the PDP and five years later, she was elected to Parliament again from Anantnag. Following Sayeed’s death in 2016, when he was heading the state government in alliance with the BJP, she took over as the first woman CM of the state.
During her stint as CM, Mehbooba held her fort against BJP ministers during the Kathua episode. When the BJP walked out of the government in 2018, her popularity was at its lowest due to a rise in civilian killings. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, she contested from Anantnag and finished third behind the NC’s Hasnain Masoodi and the Congress’s Ghulam Ahmad Mir.
Hailing from Bijbehara in south Kashmir, Mehbooba is the only “local” in the fray in Anantnag and is seen as the PDP’s best bet. The seat is seemingly headed for a triangular fight with Mufti’s entry. She will take on Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) and Gujjar leader Mian Altaf of the NC. The BJP has yet to announce its candidate and is likely to back Azad.
Waheed ur Rehman Parra
Parra’s initiation into politics was through his grandfather who was a close aide of Sayeed. He formally joined the PDP in 2013 and was subsequently appointed its youth president.
His candidature is being seen as a result of the delimitation of parliamentary seats in 2022, following which six Assembly segments of south Kashmir, where Parra holds sway, became part of the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat.
Seen as having excellent organisation skills, 37-year-old Parra was publicly praised by former Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh for his youth engagement initiatives in the Valley. As the secretary of the sports council, he was seen to be a key player in weaning the youth away from violence and into the mainstream.
Following the abrogation of Article 370 and days after he filed his nomination for the District Development Council (DDC) polls, Parra was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in a case of alleged terror funding. He won from Pulwama, his home turf, while in jail. But despite court orders, Parra was not allowed to take oath as a DDC member after his release on bail. He has been credited with spreading the party’s grassroots network, especially in south Kashmir.
On Parra’s candidature from Srinagar, where he is likely to take on NC vice-president Omar Abdullah, the former CM said there was no bigger example than him if one wished to see what the youth of Kashmir had faced and tolerated, especially since 2019. “He was arrested and tortured. His father had cancer but they (authorities) did not allow him to go and see him. They also prevented him from visiting his nephew, who was fighting for his life in Delhi,” Mehbooba said.
Fayaz Ahmad Mir
Fayaz (47) lost the 2014 Assembly elections from Kupwara to Bashir Ahmad Dar of the Peoples Conference by a wafer-thin margin of 133 votes. He was appointed the Rajya Sabha MP in 2015 and his relations with the PDP turned sour following the abrogation of Article 370.
He was later expelled and joined the Peoples Conference, a party known to have a strong presence in Kupwara. In September 2023, following a tumultuous tenure in the party, he quit citing “family reasons”.
Mir returned to the PDP in March and will be in the fray from a seat where the party stood fourth in 2019. Mehbooba said Fayaz had expressed regret and returned to the party. “When (Article) 370 was abrogated, I asked him to resign from the Upper House. He did not and I expelled him from the party. He has now returned and has an identity among people,” she said.
While he is not expected to be among the frontrunners in the fight for Baramulla, his entry is likely to dent the prospects of Peoples Conference candidate Sajad Lone
(This is an auto-generated news feed from Indian Express)
