5 years abrogation of Art 370 : The long wait for Assembly elections gets longer

The Tribune investigates the evolution of a ‘Naya Kashmir’

Adil Akhzer

Srinagar, August 1
It has been five years since the abrogation of Article 370, but the UT continues to remain without electoral representation at all levels — Assembly, panchayat and municipal.

Assembly hall being used to shoot films
People have been waiting for their elected representatives. People from outside, who are at the helm of affairs in J-K, are taking decisions for locals. In our Assembly, there are no elected representatives. The hall is used for shooting films. — Tahir Sayeed, PDP Spokesperson

It was in 2018 that the BJP ended the coalition government with the PDP. The year 2014 saw the last election to the legislative Assembly.
The frustration has begun to show. “The existing scheme of things is not a solution in a democracy,” says Mohammad Ashraf Mir, a senior leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP). “People have negligible access to offices. Elected representatives used to have a say in decision-making. Now, bureaucrats are calling the shots. An elected member used to call officials and apprise them of an issue. Nothing of the sort exists now,” he says.
By way of explanation, Mir says: “The number of people going to the Secretariat to meet officials has decreased. They view it as a futile exercise since institutions have been disempowered over the years.” More teeth to the Lieutenant Governor will force the Chief Minister to work under him, he adds.
People have been waiting to have their own elected representatives in the Assembly. But the wait has gone on for far too long. PDP spokesperson Tahir Sayeed says: “People from outside, who are at the helm of affairs in J-K, are taking decisions for locals. In our Assembly, there are no elected representatives. The hall is used for shooting films.”
The term of 4,892 panchayats expired on January 9. Along with the Block Development Council, the term of elected Urban Local Bodies, including municipalities, municipal councils and municipal committees, ended in December 2023.
After the Assembly dissolved in 2018, says Shafiq Mir, chairman, All J&K Panchayat Conference, Panchayati Raj institutions and Urban Local Bodies were the only link between people and the government. “In the absence of elected representatives, that connect is missing,” he says.
Jammu-based political analyst Zafar Chaudhary says the two tiers of Panchayati Raj were put in place with “significant empowerment” and were “marketed at massive scale” as the real grassroots democracy that would empower the common man.
However, these institutions failed to be seen as a replacement to political authority because they “lacked any central leadership, agency of voice and coherence of purpose,” he states.
In 2020, the UT government held the first-ever elections of the District Development Council (DDC). They are still holding office.
The UT has seen the formation of new parties as well. But experts say they failed to make any impact as they were dismissed as BJP’s “informal allies or alleged proxies”.
The JKAP was the first major party to come up in March 2020. Founded by former PDP leader Altaf Bukhari, several former PDP leaders joined the party as it boasted of proximity to New Delhi. Two years later, former Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad launched his DPAP — a rival to the NC and the PDP.
The result of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, says Zafar, demonstrated that no party was in a position to completely dislodge the NC and the PDP.
“Elections are the first step to engage in a long battle of restoration of the state as it existed before 2019,” he asserts.
NC president and former JK CM Farooq Abdullah says that the imposition of direct rule from New Delhi resulted in bureaucratic hurdles, particularly affecting remote areas.
“Once attended to by MLAs and MLCs, the region now finds itself at the mercy of bureaucrats who have no connection with people they are meant to serve,” he says, emphasising “These officials are not held accountable to public in a way an elected MLA is.”