New Delhi: The Jammu and Kashmir Police have detained an unspecified number of persons in the Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency which goes to polls on Monday (May 13) – the first major electoral exercise in the Kashmir Valley following the reading down of Article 370.

The detentions triggered a political storm in Kashmir, with the opposition National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) saying that the detainees were their party workers and activists who were being put behind bars to “fix the election”.

Confirming the detentions, the J&K police said that it was taking action “regardless of party affiliation” against “miscreants and potential offenders with a background of linkages to terrorism and separatism” ahead of the election.

However, the number of detainees was not released by the police.

The ongoing Lok Sabha election has been projected by the NC and PDP as a verdict on the unilateral change of J&K’s constitutional status in 2019 by the BJP-led Union government. However, the saffron party has stayed away from the parliamentary election in the Muslim-majority valley, perhaps fearing a drubbing.

The election for Srinagar, one of the three constituencies in Kashmir, is being held under the shadow of allegations and counter-allegations that the election was being allegedly fixed and sabotaged to favour the Valley-based allies of the BJP.

A day ahead of the election, Srinagar constituency candidate and PDP youth leader Waheed Parra on Sunday dragged a top police officer into the row by accusing him on X, formerly Twitter, of “allegedly directing officials to minimize voter turnout by detaining, harassing our workers”.

In a letter to the Election Commission of India (ECI), PDP president and former J&K chief minister Mehbooba accused unknown security agencies of "conducting raids and harassing PDP workers in Pulwama and Shopian districts”.

She said that “numerous party (PDP) members, sympathizers, and activists have been arbitrarily detained without justification, apparently as punishment for their efforts to organize public rallies and encourage voter turnout”.

The PDP’s allegations came after NC’s Srinagar candidate and influential Shia cleric Ruhullah Mehdi said on X that his party workers were detained by police in Chrari Sharief, Khansaheb and Chadoora assembly segments of Budgam district which is part of the Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency.

Ruhullah also flagged the issue of detentions to the ECI in a letter, noting that four activists of the party were detained by Chrari Sharief police on Saturday night while four more workers were being asked to come for questioning by the Tulmulla police station.

“This list is not exhaustive and the number of detentions is only increasing. There have also been detentions which we have not been informed of. Furthermore, we have been informed that the police have initiated a search for other prominent JKNC activists, leading to widespread panic and fear among the local populace,” Ruhullah said in his letter.

However, the J&K Police swiftly denied the charge, noting that the PDP leader’s statement on additional director general of police, Vijay Kumar, had exposed the officer to “security hazards”. The police, however, acknowledged that it has detained an unknown number of persons.

As the war of words continued between the NC-PDP combine and the J&K Police, Apni Party president Altaf Bukhari waded into the row by alleging that “thousands” of his workers were detained by the J&K Police at the behest of the NC and PDP.

He, however, didn’t give out the names of the detainees, while seeking to blame the PDP and NC for the alleged detentions.

“I will not be silenced. The National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party are involved in it. They have deep roots in J&K administration,” Bukhari, who is a BJP ally, told reporters at his Srinagar residence on Sunday, while bizarrely accusing the two parties, who have opposed the BJP’s J&K policy, of being “puppets and agents” of the saffron party-led Union government.

Asked about why the PDP was blaming him for ‘selective targeting’ of its workers by police, Bukhari, who was a minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government, falsely said that he has never been part of the administration, “The PDP and the NC have made appointments in police and civil administration over these years. They are responsible for the plight of my workers.”

The ongoing parliamentary election in J&K will set the tone for the upcoming assembly elections which are likely to be held by September after a gap of ten years. The last assembly election was conducted in Jammu and Kashmir in 2014 which led to the formation of the PDP-BJP coalition government.

“The Lok Sabha election will impact every assembly constituency of National Conference and other parties,” former J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah told reporters in Srinagar on Sunday. “This election will impact the winners also and the losers even more. We are hopeful that the (assembly) election will be completed by September.”

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