J&K Rajya Sabha polls: Congress-NC rift aids BJP's chances

On October 24, elections will finally be held to fill the four Rajya Sabha seats from Jammu and Kashmir that have been vacant since February 2021. In the ordinary course, barring the end of a humiliating wait for reinstating the erstwhile state’s representation in Parliament’s Upper House, the polls would have meant little else. Not anymore.

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Had the impending polls been conducted conventionally, political parties in J&K would have fielded only as many candidates as they could have elected based on their legislative strength in the Assembly. But then, as with almost everything in J&K, the upcoming elections have now been infused with intrigue; their otherwise predictable outcome is now uncertain, and the Union Territory’s perennially restive political landscape has been pushed yet again to the precipice of upheaval.

Tensions strain uneasy alliance

The BJP’s announcement of its intent to field nominees for all four seats despite its legislative strength allowing for only a solo win, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s proclivity for balancing Srinagar’s aspirations with New Delhi machinations and the Congress’s desperation to shore up its numbers in the Upper House have triggered fears of cross-voting and horse-trading.

Adding to this already heady mix is the sub-judice case against the J&K Lieutenant Governor’s power to nominate five members to the UT Assembly. The powers, if not stayed during the October 16 hearing in the J&K High Court and then exercised by LG Manoj Sinha before the October 24 polls, could skew the numbers game in the Assembly and boost the BJP’s prospects of winning at least an additional seat than the one it is currently assured of. If all of this wasn’t befuddling enough, then there’s the frosty ties and crisis of trust between so-called allies, the National Conference (NC) and the Congress, who are presently at daggers drawn on Omar’s reluctance to concede to the latter one RS berth.

If the election was all about playing fair, the NC and the Congress, provided they remained united, could have comfortably wrested three of the four vacant seats. The two parties are not partners in government despite having contested last year’s Assembly polls in alliance, but they have 47 MLAs (NC-41, Congress-6) between them in the 88-member Assembly. In addition, Omar’s government has the support of CPM’s Kulgam MLA MY Tarigami as well as five independent legislators, thus giving him a comfortable 53-seat tally that’s adequate to secure three Rajya Sabha berths.

Poll arithmetic turns messy

The BJP, the principal Opposition party in J&K, has 28 MLAs, just enough to secure one Rajya Sabha seat. Mehbooba Mufti’s PDP, Sajad Lone’s People’s Conference, and the AAP, along with independent legislators Sheikh Khursheed and Shabbir Ahmad Kullay, together make up another seven MLAs. This forms a ‘neutral opposition’ bloc that lacks the strength to field a candidate of its own. However, it holds enough numbers to spoil the NC’s party, should any of them decide to align with the BJP, no matter how unlikely this may seem to idealists in J&K’s sharply divided political landscape.

Given the way numbers stack up, it is hardly surprising that the BJP’s decision to field candidates for all four seats has set the cat among the pigeons. “The third notification issued by the Election Commission has clubbed together polling for the third and fourth vacant seats. While for the third seat, numbers are tilted in favour of the (ruling) alliance, there are fears of abstentions and cross-voting to help the BJP win the fourth seat,” a senior Congress leader told The Federal on condition of anonymity.

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The Congress’s desire to see one of its own elected to the Rajya Sabha with the support of NC legislators has complicated matters further. Sources in both parties confirmed to The Federal that while NC patriarch Farooq Abdullah, who himself is expected to be one of the ruling alliance’s nominees, had conveyed to the Congress leadership during his visit to Delhi last week his willingness to concede one seat to the Grand Old Party, Omar remains opposed to such a pact. Sources in the NC say that besides fielding his father, Farooq, on one seat, Omar wants his party’s Sajad Kichloo and Aga Mahmood to be sent to the Upper House.

Omar’s stand has, expectedly, left the Congress both agitated and confused over the chief minister’s true motives. Sources in the Congress point at Omar’s reluctance during the past 11 months of his tenure as CM to be scathingly critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Centre’s “betrayal of promises” made to J&K, including the one on restoring statehood. They wonder if “MLAs from NC may cross-vote or abstain just to make BJP win” in case Farooq prevails over his son to concede a RS berth to the Congress.

Cross-voting threat looms large

Things may become just as complicated for the NC if Omar rebuffs Congress. With only six MLAs, the Congress knows only too well that it has no real bargaining power with its ally and can, at best, hope that Omar would ‘play nice’. But, as another Congress insider noted, the party’s inability to drive a hard bargain doesn’t dilute its “power of being a disruptor”. This party leader claimed that should Omar deny the Congress a Rajya Sabha seat, “there could be sabotage” by at least some Congress MLAs of the NC’s bid to win the third seat, who may then either abstain or even cross-vote for the BJP nominee. “Everything is in NC's hands,” the party insider said.

Given its unresolved negotiations with the NC, the Congress has been shying from officially staking a claim for an RS berth. J&K Congress chief Tariq Hamid Karra told The Federal that his party had “not yet held any meeting” so far with the NC regarding the Rajya Sabha elections, but added that the GOP would be “more than happy” to land one RS seat from the UT. Zadibal MLA and the NC’s chief spokesperson Tanwir Sadiq, a close Omar aide, however, confirmed to The Federal that the Congress had, indeed, approached his party leadership with the request for one Rajya Sabha seat. “The party leadership will decide what strategy needs to be followed, Sadiq said, refusing to divulge if the NC was favourably inclined towards conceding its ally’s request.

The elections will also reveal how the PDP’s three MLAs, along with People’s Conference’s Sajad Lone, AAP’s jailed legislator Mehraj Malik and independent MLAs Kullay and Khursheed, brother of jailed Baramulla MP Engineer Rasheed, cast their vote.

Independents weigh lesser evil

Khursheed’s convoluted response to The Federal’s questions on who he’d favour in the RS elections was telling. The Langate MLA said that though he would want a non-BJP nominee to win, he couldn’t be expected to support the NC for its “silence against the BJP”. “The way they (NC) maintained silence after coming to power on all major issues, including restoration of Article 370 and Article 35-A, J&K’s (restoration of) statehood, termination of employees… they have not fulfilled the promises they made to the people,” Khursheed told The Federal.

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Also, on the minds of independent legislators from the Valley is the Omar government’s failure to make any meaningful intervention over the “continued killing of civilians at the hands of security forces” over the past 11 months and particularly in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack. Though these independents realise that their abstention would only aid the BJP, they also want Omar to be gutsy in his dealings with New Delhi; something they lament hasn’t happened over the past year.

At the same time, independent MLAs The Federal spoke to curiously expressed apprehensions that while they may still vote against the BJP’s nominees, they believe Sajad Lone would “vote in favour of BJP, while PDP (which has three MLAs) may altogether abstain from voting, considering their vehement opposition to the NC”.

While Lone declined to comment, a source close to him told The Federal that the People's Conference chief has "kept his cards close to his chest" for now and would cast his vote "in the interests of Kashmir".

Shabbir Ahmad Kullay, MLA from South Kashmir’s Shopian, told The Federal that for independent MLAs like himself, the upcoming polls are about “choosing the lesser evil” between a seemingly pro-Kashmir NC that has done precious little to address the Valley’s issues over the past year and a “communal-hatred driven BJP” that had stripped Kashmir of its constitutional guarantees and rights.