Article 370’s death must birth a new J&K voter list that includes all residents by new deadline of November 25
M N Sabharwal and Manish Sabharwal
The Book How India Became Democratic by Omit Shani details how our first national voter list was compiled and magnificently captures the almost pathological worry of election officials about missing anybody and their determination to ensure every body voted in 1952. This instinct for inclusiveness is not shared by some J&K politicians who call for rejecting voter list preparations that follow our Constitution’s algorithm for including all state residents. We must reject this self-interested, parochial and unconstitutional whining because voter lists that enrol many lakhs of missing residents will accelerate statehood restoration and competitive politics. Ghulam Nabi Azad’s new party is hardly the new breed of local politicians we cheer for but is nonetheless welcome because its birth declared poorna swaraj from dynastic rule and Azad promises to prioritise job creation. Both evils have long plagued J&K.
Changing your mind about electoral politics used to be fatal in J&K; the assassination of Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq of the Awami Action League felt baffling in 1990 because the hardline leader consistently supported Pakistan. But his tentative suggestion that peace needed political dialogue led to his murder by PoK-based Hizbul Mujahideen (the ‘Askari wing of Jamaat-e-Islami). Pakistan exported terrorism created a nine year election free J&K starting in 1987, but couldn’t prevent elected state governments after 1996 from four assembly elections. Pakistan’s queasy relationship with democracy no PM has ever completed a full term – comes from their deep state embracing national poet Muhammad Iqbal’s lament “jamhooriyat ek tarz-e-hukumat hai jisme logon ko gina jaata he, tola nahin” (democracy counts people instead of weighing them). Pervez Musharraf, then concurrently President, Prime Minister, and Army Chief of Pakistan- condescendingly “weighed” citizens by making college degrees compulsory for all election candidates.
In contrast, India’s election track record is enviable. Our first Parliamentary elections in 1952 required a Constitution, a list of 17 crore voters (of whom 85 percent could not read or write) and 2.25 lakh polling booths. They were highly competitive: 30 parties fielded 1,874 candidates and the Congress Party got 45 percent of the votes but 75 percent of the seats. Since then, half of the 17 general elections have led to a new central government. Our voter population is 91 crore, and more than 370 political parties campaign assuming everybody votes where they live.
J&K’s next assembly elections will be the first under the Indian Constitution- the last 11 assembly elections held under the J&K State Representation of People Act with six year government tenures were hardly fair because they excluded residents from voting based on their birthplace, birth date or ancestors. The National Conference (NC) won all 75 seats in the first state election of 1951 because 43 NC candidates were elected unopposed a week before voting, nominations of 13 candidates of Praja Parishad were rejected (this party later merged with the Jana Sangh), two independent candidates opted out, and two Ladakh seats were won by nominal NC members. In 1957 and 1962, the NC acquired a majority before polling began (their candidates were elected unopposed, or Opposition candidate nomination papers were rejected). In the 1972 elections, women candidates contested for the first time, and Congress adopted the unopposed or rejection technology to win. The 1983 elections were ferociously fought- Indira Gandhi hadn’t forgotten Sheikh Abdullah’s betrayal of 1977- and she campaigned for a few weeks a sitting Prime Minister, but Farooq Abdullah led the NC to victory. This victory was soon sabotaged by Farooq’s sister’s husband, G M Shah, in partnership with Indira Gandhi, Mufti Sayeed leaving Congress in 1987 influenced consequent state elections and created opportunities for Ghulam Nabi Azad (whose new party will surely condemn domicile based voting given his personal Parliament election victory from Maharashtra).
The state’s traditional political fault line was not Jammu vs Kashmir but Sher vs Bakra: Shers were Sheikh Abdullah supporters anchored around Hazratbal mosque, while Bakras (named after their beards) were Mirwaiz supporters anchored around the Jama Masjid Mosque in Nowhatta. Mufti Sayeed headed the Congress Party but didn’t always deride soft separatism, he disrupted a meeting that proposed to rename Radio Kashmir to All India Radio (ironically, he didn’t hesitate in fighting Parliament elections from Uttar Pradesh) Farooq Abdullah ignored requests to control pro-Pakistani sloganeering at a 1983 India-West Indies cricket match while smugly suggesting it would improve his bargaining power with Delhi. J&K local politics never became brutally competitive because these families weaponised Article 370, religion and Pakistan to create a 50 year oligopoly.
The recent J&K delimitation commission envisages elections with nine parliament seats and 90 assembly constituencies (43 Jammu region and 47 Kashmir region).The new constituencies for remote areas and the thoughtful constituency renaming of Tangmarg to Gulmarg, Sonwar to Lal Chowk, Khour to Chhamb, etc are delightful. We estimate that seven lakh people from Bihar, UP and Odisha are now J&K residents- they must vote in the next state election subject to the rules used for residency verification everywhere else in our Republic. Hopefully, this election also catalyses the overdue national consensus on using Aadhaar to deduplicate electoral rolls.
The academic David Shulman wrote “All great civilisations and great societies have known that human beings are capable of imagining: India merely cultivated this art or faculty more boly than most.” J&K- a confluence of many of India’s civilisations and societies – must use next year’s election to boldly imagine a representative state government populated by a new breed of polticians that listen, heal and rebuild rather than oppress, exploit and destroy. We both have voted as residents either in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, or Uttar Pradesh but couldn’t vote in J&K despite living there for decades. Article 370’s death must birth a new J&K voter list that includes all residents by the new deadline of November 25 because our Constitution was written by good ancestors who ensured India doesn’t weigh our citizens but counts them.
(M N Sabharwal is former Director General of J&K Police and Manish Sabharwal is a J&K born entrepreneur). Courtesy : Indian Express
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