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Basharat Peer in Ganderbal, Srinagar
This time it is a different assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir. The myth of the National Conference's invincibility is crumbling, and that too in its bastion.
Twenty kilometres from capital Srinagar is Ganderbal town. Barring a Congress leader each in 1967 and 1972, it has elected NC candidates in every election.
NC founder Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah has represented it once and Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah thrice. And this time, the third-generation Abdullah -- NC president Omar -- is contesting from here.
But electoral victory is not a foregone conclusion for the NC president. The voters are asking questions and there is a strong anti-incumbency factor. The chief minister addressed a rally in Ganderbal on Friday and there were not more than 350 people to hear him speak.
Farooq, however, did not acknowledge that the party has lost its sheen or that he has lost his crowd-pulling capacity. "You see anti-incumbency. I do not see it. Become the chief minister and you will know that you cannot please everyone," he said after the rally.
Except for some promises, the chief minister did not have much to offer to the gathering. What he did have, though, were some sound bytes. "Terrorism will see an end in this state", he said. And when asked if the first round of polling on September 16 was free and fair, he retorted: "You cannot see how Pakistan is killing my workers. You cannot see their coercion. I will blow up that f***ing nation."
The chief minister denied the allegations by the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party that his government had embezzled funds provided by the Centre. "Order an enquiry and you will see where the money has gone," he said.
But his voters are not impressed. They feel that the chief minister has let them down.
"When we go to meet our MLA -- the chief minister -- his security guards show us the door. We cannot meet him because of security reasons. What is the point of having an inaccessible representative? We only see him on the television," said Riyaz Khan, a youth.
There is resentment because Farooq rarely visits his constituency. "We can count on fingertips the number of times Farooq sahib has come here since the 1996 election. These people take our votes and fly to London," added Amin Sheikh, a taxi driver from Tihoor, Ganderbal.
At Kacchen village, barely two kilometres from where the rally was held, the loss of faith in the National Conference is obvious.
"In 1996, [the] National Conference made promises and we voted for Farooq Abdullah. But my two educated sons are still unemployed. So we have decided to vote for the NC opponent," said Mohammed Sultan, who was working with his sons at his paddy field. His village has around 700 votes. "Most will vote against NC," he added.
At Lar village, at the other end of the Ganderbal constituency, residents tell the same story of neglect. It is one of the biggest villages in the chief minister's constituency. "It should have been a model of development. But we do not even have the telephone facility here. You need to walk five kilometres to make a phone call," said Shabir Ahmad, a shopkeeper.
However, in Ganderbal town, the party holds its ground, thanks to a local NC leader, Saloora. "His doors are always open to us and he does care about us. So we will vote NC only," said Pervez Ahmad, a youth.
But there are also dissenting voices. In the main Ganderbal market, Habibullah Dar, a shopkeeper who has been voting for NC since 1947, is disillusioned. When asked what he thought Omar's candidature, he said, "Like father, like son."
All this is helping the People's Democratic Party of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. The PDP has fielded a local -- Qazi Mohammed Afzal -- from Ganderbal. He was the Congress nominee against Farooq in the 1996 election, but lost badly.
Riding on an anti-incumbency wave, Afzal is now hoping to win from the son what he lost to the father.
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