Why PDP is a Sinking Ship in 2024

It is not unusual for politicians and political groups to suffer damage to their reputations or earn notoriety on Kashmir’s dicey political turf. Kashmir, they say, is a graveyard of reputations. The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is collapsing like a pack of cards after it stunned political pundits with its electoral dominance since the 2002 Assembly elections.

Founded by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in 1999, the PDP won 16 seats in the 2002 Assembly elections, improved its tally to 21 in the 2008 elections, and 28 in the 2014 elections. Twice, the party was able to stitch partnerships to form coalition governments – with the Congress from 2002 to 2008, and with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from March 2015 to June 2018.

What has gone so horribly wrong with the PDP? Why are its once staunch supporters deserting a sinking ship? From espousing the demand for “joint mechanism”, “self-rule” and “demilitarisation” for both parts of Jammu and Kashmir to subsequently forging a partnership with the ideologically antithetical BJP twice in two years (2015 and 2016), this party is slowly losing its appeal and charm among its voters, even in the pockets of South Kashmir that were, for long, considered its bastion.

‘Stabbed in the back’

Aijaz Mir, a former legislator of the PDP from the erstwhile Wachi constituency in South Kashmir, left the party recently and has decided to contest as an independent candidate from Zainapora.

Mir alleged that Mehbooba Mufti, president of the PDP and former chief minister, was being “misled by a tiny group of advisors” close to her. He believes he was treated unfairly and perhaps punished for being an honest and loyal foot soldier of the party.

“I was stabbed in the back for being loyal to the party in turbulent times,” Mir told The Wire after being denied a ticket from the Zainapora Assembly segment.

“They tried to bury me and finish my political career by denying me the mandate, but they didn’t realise that the people in my constituency are the pillars of strength to me,” Mir, who is in his late 30s, added.

He had stood with the party during the past five years when more than 20 former MLAs and MLCs walked out, he said.

Mir invoked a famous verse of the Urdu poet Jaun Elia to express his disenchantment: “Wafa, Ikhlas, Qurbani, Mohabbat/Ab Inn Lafzou’n Ka Peechha Kyoun Karein Hum (Loyalty, sincerity, sacrifice, love/No point chasing these words now).” The couplet that Mir shared on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) is from the poem Naya Ek Rishta Paida Kyoun Karein Hum.

In private, the PDP’s leadership group realises the “error in judgment”.

“Denying the mandate to Aijaz is a big mistake. We could very much lose the seat (Zainapora), but it is a party decision,” a senior leader said on the condition of anonymity.

Mir is not the only leader to have left in disappointment. Suhail Bukhari, the PDP’s chief spokesperson, quit on August 20 and swiftly joined the Congress.

“Yes, I have formally resigned from the PDP,” Bukhari said. A former broadcast journalist, Bukhari belongs to North Kashmir and was expecting the ticket from the Wagoora Kreeri Assembly seat there. But the PDP decided to field Basharat Bukhari instead.

Ousted from the PDP in 2018 on charges of “anti-party activities”, Basharat Bukhari had first joined the National Conference (NC) and later the Sajad Lone-led People’s Conference (PC). After six years, he has returned to the PDP fold.

Suhail Bukhari, who stood with the party during a pressure cooker situation from 2019 till 2024, feels aggrieved.

Tahir Syed, another PDP spokesman, has also resigned. In his resignation letter, which he has shared on X, Syed wrote: “It is with a heavy heart that I write this unpleasant letter of resignation from the post of spokesperson and basic membership of the party.”

Reliable sources said Syed made the decision because he was unhappy with the PDP’s choice of candidate (Mohammad Afzal Wani) for the Trehgam Assembly segment.

Syed also used a verse to take a dig at Mehbooba Mufti: “Tere badalne ka dukh nahin hai mujhe/Main to mere yaqeen pe sharminda hou’n (I’m not pained by your indifference, I’m embarrassed I placed my faith in you).”

Is the PDP losing the plot?

Formation of PDP

Many theories have been floated about the formation of the PDP in July 1999. One of the most publicised is that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was behind the PDP’s creation and the objective was to thwart any attempt by any single regional political force to ‘blackmail New Delhi’ through the J&K Legislative Assembly.

For context, the NC had won a two-thirds majority in the 1996 Assembly elections and its government had, soon after, set up a State Autonomy Committee. The committee submitted its report in April 1999 and the following year, the state Assembly passed an Autonomy Resolution. The resolution was summarily rejected by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government at the time.

Also Read: Why the 2024 J&K Assembly Elections Are Reminiscent of the 1977 Elections

One more theory about the PDP’s instant rise, particularly in South Kashmir, was that the now proscribed Jama’at-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir, a socio-political and religious party, lent its support to the party in the Assembly elections of 2002, 2008 and 2014.

Yet another allegation is that the PDP leaders in the past have clandestinely sought assistance and endorsement from a banned militant outfit. To date, no concrete evidence has been produced to corroborate this premise.

The PDP denies such charges.

‘Political Suicide’

In an exclusive interview with this writer in 2015 in Jammu, former chief minister and PDP patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed described the PDP’s partnership with the BJP as a “paradigm shift” in Kashmir politics.

I vividly recall telling Karan Thapar and Rajdeep Sardesai in a television election debate programme conducted by Headlines Today that the PDP-BJP partnership is an “unholy alliance” that won’t complete its full term of six years. At the same time, I said the partnership will eventually prove a “political suicide” for the PDP.

To me, this is not an “I told you so” moment. To any dispassionate analyst, it was clear that the PDP had shot itself in the foot by allying with the BJP against the popular will in the Kashmir Valley. Mehbooba Mufti had sought the mandate promising voters that a vote for the PDP was the only way to keep the BJP out.

And then the party invoked the argument of “electoral arithmetic” after the BJP won 25 Assembly seats from the Jammu region while drawing a blank from the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh.

Autonomy Resolution

The Caravan in its January 2016 cover story reported on the view that the PDP “was a creation of the National Democratic Alliance government, launched to fill the need of a ‘pro-India’ party” in Jammu and Kashmir.

The story quoted Liaqat Ali Khan, a former commander of the dreaded Ikhwan, a government-sponsored counter-insurgency group, as saying that “all the Indian agencies were directed to support the PDP.”

The story contended that “the BJP government funded and supported the PDP to prop up opposition to the National Conference.” 

The “purported reason for this move” was that the NC under the leadership of Farooq Abdullah had passed the Autonomy Resolution in the J&K Legislative Assembly with a two-thirds majority.

This, according to the memoir of former deputy prime minister L.K. Advani, had “shocked” India and the A.B. Vajpayee-led government in New Delhi. In his autobiography My Country My Life, Advani while talking about the NC’s Autonomy Resolution in a chapter entitled Dealing With The Kashmir Issue, writes: “The nation was shocked on June 26, 2000, during the Vajpayee government’s rule in New Delhi, when the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly adopted a report of the State Autonomy Committee (SAC) and asked the Centre to immediately implement it. The SAC recommended (the) return of the constitutional situation in Jammu and Kashmir to its pre-1953 status by restoring to the state all subjects of governance except defence, foreign affairs, currency and communication.”

In the J&K Legislative Assembly, the Autonomy Resolution was adopted by voice vote. New Delhi wanted to avoid any similar discomfiture in the future. According to this view, the PDP was formed to fragment the Muslim vote bank in Jammu & Kashmir and consolidate the Hindu vote bank in the plains of Jammu, Pir Panjal and the Chenab Valley.

The PDP denies all charges about it being created by the NDA or used as a pawn to divide the Muslim vote in the valley.

In early 2000, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had famously and controversially said on record that “Kashmiri militants don’t need guns anymore because their representatives are now in the Assembly”.

In 2002, the Sayeed-led PDP forged a partnership with the Congress to form a coalition government in which the chief minister’s post would be held by rotation by the two parties, with a three-year term each.

At the time, the PDP’s slogan was “healing touch”. The party also favoured “self-rule” and “joint mechanism” as a viable solution for the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. In a way, this was a step ahead of the NC which favoured regional autonomy by turning the clock backward to 1953.

Sayeed chose a party symbol that was telling. The pen and the inkpot as a symbol, and the green flag, were reminiscent of the erstwhile Muslim United Front or Muslim Muttahida Mahaz. There was political messaging in miming the MUF symbol. Some have argued that the PDP chose its symbol knowing the same had been popularised among the Kashmiri masses by the MUF in 1987.

In 2015, Sayeed’s decision to ally with the BJP came as a rude shock even to his supporters. In an interview with The Indian Express, Tassaduq Mufti, the son of Mufti Sayeed, said the PDP had become a “partner in crime”.

‘Mufti underestimated Modi, overestimated himself’

In Spy Chronicles RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace, a book by journalist Aditya Sinha based on conversations between Amarjit Singh Dulat and Asad Durrani, India’s former spymaster Dulat argues that “Mufti underestimated Modi, overestimated himself, and found himself in a fix.”

The PDP defended its alliance with the BJP, arguing that it made the saffron party dilute its rigid position on Kashmir. As part of the Agenda of Alliance, the BJP did not press for abrogation of Article 370, agreed to maintain the erstwhile state’s constitutional position, and also agreed to hold talks with all stakeholders (Pakistan and the All Parties Hurriyat Conference).

The PDP did not include its vision of self-rule and joint mechanism for Jammu and Kashmir in the alliance document. Both sides made compromises on their respective ideological positions.

After the BJP withdrew its support to the PDP in mid-2018, senior leaders of the PDP started exiting the party. Muzaffar Hussain Beig, co-founder of the PDP, left. Soon, former cabinet minister in the PDP-BJP government Altaf Bukhari was expelled from the PDP for “anti-party activities”. Mohammad Rafi Mir, another senior leader, also left.

Several other senior PDP leaders, including former legislators, such as Haseeb Drabu, Imran Ansari, Mohammad Ashraf Mir, Basharat Bukhari, quit in 2019. In the last five years, at least 40 PDP leaders have either walked out of the party or have been sacked. This mass exodus has put the PDP on the mat.

Despite Mehbooba Mufti’s stiff opposition to the BJP in the last five years or so, it would require a miracle for her party to win anything between eight and ten Assembly seats in the upcoming elections. Voters in Kashmir have neither forgotten the PDP’s partnership with the BJP nor its attempt to defend the indefensible during the civilian agitation in 2016.