'I Don't Know What It Takes To Get A BJP Ticket'

In 2022 Nanaji Dembi pulled down the Hurriyat office board in Srinagar, an act of defiance that grabbed headlines.

Despite such nationalistic bravado, the BJP has denied him a ticket for the assembly election.

At 60, sitting on a bench at the Dal lake in Srinagar, Nanaji Dembi, a Kashmiri Pandit and a former member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, cuts a sorry figure.

He looks all alone, but it was not always the case with him.

Dembi burst into national fame in October 2022 when he pulled down the office board of the separatist organisation, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, and wrote 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' on the gate at Raj Bagh in Srinagar.

"I did something which no one in Kashmir would have dared to do in Srinagar," recalls Dembi in a choked voice.

In October 2022, when Kashmiri Pandit Puran Krishan Bhat was killed by terrorists in Shopian, anger spilled out on to the streets of Srinagar against the Hurriyat and Dembi was one of the protestors to go to the Hurriyat office and pull down its party board.

"I wrote 'India' on the gate of the Hurriyat office and later wrote 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' too," Dembi remembers.

Asked why the Bharatiya Janata Party denied him an election ticket two years later. "I have no idea why they denied me a ticket. If you get an answer to your question please let me know," Dembi tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com.

"I don't know what it takes to get a BJP ticket when I worked day and night for the party in Srinagar for the last 10 years in the Habba Kadal area."

He pauses and adds with tears in his eyes, "I am hurt by the BJP's behaviour towards me."

Dembi is now contesting the assembly election from Habba Kadal on a Sampooran Bharat Kranti Party ticket.

"I am sad because five Kashmiri Pandits are contesting against me. I personally told them we must fight as one, but nothing happened. I told them let us make a chit of us six people and do a lucky draw. Whoever wins will represent Kashmiri Pandits from Habba Kadal," says Dembi.

But no one listened to his appeal.

The five other Kashmiri Pandits in the fray are: Ashok Bhat (BJP), Ashok Sahiba (Independent), Sanjay Saraf (Rashtriya Lok Dal[Ram Vilas Paswan]), Ashok Raina (Independent) and Mrs Labroo (Independent).

Dembi is certain that Habba Kadal will be a sure shot victory for Kashmiri Pandits as there are 27,000 voters from the community in this assembly constituency.

"These voters stay in migrant camps in Vessu and Kulgam and some stay in the Jagti camp in Jammu. I was hoping that if these 27,000 votes went to one Kashmiri Pandit candidate victory was sure. Unfortunately, there is no unity among Kashmiri Pandits when it comes to elections," says Dembi.

About 50 to 100 Kashmiri Pandit voters live in the Habba Kadal, which has a Shiva temple in the area

There are some 94,000 Kashmiri Muslim voters in the constituency.

Dembi is confident that the Muslims of Habba Kadal will vote for him because he has good relations with them.

In his early 20s, Nanaji Dembi left Habba Kadal during the mass exodus of Pandits from the Kashmir Valley when Islamic militancy was at its peak in the 1990s.

He stayed in refugee camps in Jammu for many years but unlike many other Kashmiri Pandits he never gave up hope to come back to Kashmir.

"I always knew I want to come back and I will die here because this is my motherland," asserts Dembi who returned to the Valley in 2015.

He lives in the home which his family had left in the 1990s.

"Kashmir is my janambhoomi. I always wanted to come back and work here," says Dembi.

But was his move back to Kashmir in 2015 a sudden decision?

"I started coming here from 2013. I was testing the waters by staying for some days and then going back to Jammu. In 2015 when I felt it was safe to come back I shifted permanently to Srinagar. I came back here with my family," says Dembi.

"I am very sure I will get Kashmiri Muslim votes as well as Kashmiri Pandit votes because I am born and brought up here. I only wish the Kashmiri Pandit votes should not have got divided, but unfortunately that remains a wish."