Azhar Hussain
SRINAGAR, Nov 10: On November 3, Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi brought a 24 year association with the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference to an emphatic public conclusion. At a gathering in Budgam marking the 26th death anniversary of his martyred father, Aga Syed Mehdi, the Srinagar Lok Sabha MP announced his resignation from the party and Parliament.
Signing his resignation letter before supporters, Ruhullah described the act as a declaration of freedom, an “Azadinaama”. His parliamentary resignation was subsequently accepted by the Lok Sabha Speaker with effect from November 3.
The departure was neither abrupt nor politically inconsequential. It followed months of escalating friction with the NC leadership, particularly Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, over what Ruhullah described as the party’s retreat from its electoral commitments. Restoration of Article 370, constitutional rights, reservation reform and the release of political prisoners formed the core of his indictment. His announcement of a new political platform suggested that the rupture was intended to be more than a departure from an established party. It was an attempt to redefine his political trajectory.
Yet the question of what comes next remains considerably more complicated than the spectacle of his exit.
Congress has emerged as one of the most frequently discussed destinations in Kashmir’s political rumour mill. Alongside it, speculation has circulated about a broader political formation involving former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Baramulla MP Engineer Rashid. Neither proposition, however, has been established. Reports of an alliance involving Azad has been outrightly rejected by the DPAP Chairman himself subtly throwing his weight behind NC.
Pertinently, there is also a historical irony to the Congress speculation. Ruhullah’s father was a prominent political leader associated with Congress before his assassination in 2000. Yet familial political history does not necessarily determine the trajectory of the next generation.
The immediate political reactions have added to the intrigue. The National Conference responded sharply to Ruhullah’s departure, accusing him of betrayal and moral bankruptcy. BJP leader Ram Madhav, meanwhile, suggested that Ruhullah’s Budgam rally had the “blessings” of his party, a remark that invited criticism from the NC. The BJP’s Ravinder Raina subsequently distanced the party from the turmoil, asserting that it had “absolutely nothing to do with the turmoil within the National Conference” and rejecting allegations of engineering defections.
However, the Congress theory is intuitively appealing as it is politically expensive. There exists a huge ideological fault line. Congress’s relationship with Ruhullah presents a question that cannot be resolved merely by identifying a potential political vacancy.
The party has maintained a distinct position on Article 370. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has rejected the BJP’s allegations that his party intends to restore the provision, arguing that Parliament had already settled the issue. J&K Congress president Tariq Hameed Karra has likewise maintained that the party’s position is not identical to the National Conference’s demand and that’s why Congress has been only vocal about Statehood Plus, which includes securing additional job and land rights for J&K but not the inclusion of the demand for restoration of Article 370.
These differences became particularly visible in the aftermath of the 2024 Assembly elections, when Congress and NC adopted differing approaches to the question of special status. The divergence was not simply a disagreement over political messaging. It exposed a substantive divide over the constitutional question that continues to animate Ruhullah’s politics.
For Ruhullah, the restoration of statehood alone cannot adequately address the political transformation of Jammu and Kashmir after 2019. He has consistently argued that treating statehood as the principal objective risks normalising the larger constitutional changes introduced that year. Congress, by contrast, has placed the restoration of full statehood at the forefront of its political campaign.
The distinction is consequential. A party that has publicly resisted being associated with the restoration of Article 370 would have to reconcile that position with the political demands of a leader whose public credibility rests substantially on his insistence that the issue cannot be abandoned.
Karra’s response to Ruhullah’s resignation was revealing. He attributed the rupture to a possible “lack of ideological compatibility”, acknowledging that Ruhullah held a different perspective while the NC was moving in another direction. His remarks were accompanied by an unequivocal reaffirmation of Congress’s commitment to stand with the National Conference whenever it faces political pressure from the BJP.
The phrase may therefore describe more than Ruhullah’s relationship with the NC. It also captures the difficulty of imagining a seamless political accommodation with Congress.
The second obstacle, Coalition Arithmetic, is less ideological and considerably more pragmatic.
Congress and the National Conference contested the 2024 Assembly elections in alliance and remain partners in the government formed thereafter. Congress, however, has stayed outside Omar Abdullah’s Cabinet while continuing to support the broader political arrangement and pressing for the restoration of full statehood.
The alliance has never been an uncomplicated partnership of political convictions. It has been shaped substantially by the shared imperative of countering the BJP.
Rahul, Kharge and Karra have repeatedly emphasised that Congress would stand alongside the NC whenever the latter faces a political threat from the BJP. Especially Karra’s response to Ruhullah’s resignation reiterated precisely that position, even as he acknowledged the ideological differences between Ruhullah and his party.
Against this backdrop, welcoming Ruhullah into Congress would create a delicate political contradiction.
It would mean accommodating one of the NC’s most prominent critics at a time when Congress is publicly committed to preserving its alliance with the party. Such a move could be interpreted by the BJP as an attempt to destabilise a coalition Congress has spent considerable political capital defending.
For Congress, the calculation is therefore not simply whether Ruhullah possesses electoral appeal. It is whether that appeal justifies the potential damage to an existing political arrangement, that too which will have far reaching consequences at the national level.
The Congress theory is not without merit. Ruhullah remains a prominent political voice with considerable public visibility, particularly among sections of the electorate dissatisfied with the NC’s handling of its electoral commitments.
But political opportunity and political feasibility are not necessarily the same thing.
Moral capital is not a political machine. The more difficult question concerns Ruhullah’s own organisational strength.
His dissent against the NC has been sustained and increasingly public. The confrontation over the party’s ideological direction at the May 2025 Working Committee meeting marked an important escalation in his differences with the leadership. He questioned what he perceived as the abandonment of core electoral promises, particularly on Article 370 and reservation reform.
Yet the dissent did not translate into a visible legislative bloc. Despite the intensity of the disagreement, Ruhullah has not demonstrated that a substantial number of sitting NC legislators are prepared to leave the party alongside him. The party’s internal tensions have not established a direct organisational alignment with Ruhullah’s proposed political platform.
This distinction matters because a leader’s moral authority, public resonance and legislative strength are three separate political assets. Ruhullah possesses a measure of the first two. The third remains unproven.
His clearest electoral indication of influence came in the November 2025 Budgam Assembly bypoll, where the NC suffered defeat at the hands of the PDP’s Aga Syed Muntazir Mehdi. Muntazir secured 21,576 votes against the NC candidate’s 17,098, winning by 4,478 votes.
The contest unfolded against a backdrop of strained relations between Ruhullah and the NC. Ruhullah had declined to support the party’s candidate, while sections of his supporters reportedly backed the PDP nominee. The result was consequently interpreted as evidence of the damage his dissent could inflict upon the NC’s electoral prospects.
But the result also demands a more cautious interpretation. Muntazir is Ruhullah’s cousin and belongs to the family associated with the influential Anjuman e Sharie Shiayan. The religious and familial networks associated with the Aga family have long played a role in Budgam’s political landscape.
These networks may provide Ruhullah with considerable capacity to mobilise voters. They do not, however, automatically translate into a durable political organisation under his independent leadership.
The Budgam result demonstrated that Ruhullah’s dissent could weaken the NC in a strategically important constituency. It did not conclusively establish that the same electorate would transfer its allegiance to a new party led by him.
That distinction is particularly important in Kashmir, where electoral loyalties are shaped by local networks, decade old cadres, religious affiliations, party structures and the immediate political circumstances of individual constituencies.
The experience of alternative political formations offers a further caution. Parties such as Apni Party and Democratic Progressive Azad Party have struggled to establish a broad and durable electoral base after 2019. Both have faced persistent criticism and questions about their grassroots reach.
Ruhullah’s political credibility may be stronger on certain issues. Whether that credibility can be converted into an enduring organisational structure remains an open question.
Taken together, these considerations complicate the narrative of an inevitable Congress entry. Ruhullah’s resignation has created a significant political opening. It has also exposed the limitations of his existing political capital. He leaves the National Conference with a powerful public indictment of its leadership, but without a confirmed legislative contingent or an established independent party structure.
Congress, meanwhile, confronts a different set of constraints. It has a potentially influential political figure on offer, but one whose central constitutional demand does not align neatly with the party’s national position. Accommodating him could also unsettle an alliance with the NC that remains central to Congress’s political strategy in Jammu and Kashmir.
The more plausible interpretation, therefore, is not that Congress is an obvious destination, but that it is one of several politically difficult possibilities.
Ruhullah’s next move will depend on whether he can transform public dissatisfaction into a functioning political organisation. Congress’s decision, if the question ever formally arises, will depend on whether the potential electoral gains outweigh the ideological and coalition costs.
For now, the central question is not merely where Aga Ruhullah Mehdi will go after the National Conference.
It is whether a leader who has made a compelling case against an established political party can build a viable political alternative without the organisational machinery that made his rise possible in the first place.
Both Ruhullah’s next political vehicle and Congress’s appetite for accommodation remain unresolved. What is clear is that his resignation has opened a new chapter in Kashmir’s political contest, one whose eventual outcome will be determined less by the rhetoric of freedom than by the harder realities of ideology, organisation and electoral arithmetic.
