PDP Foundation Day and Ruhullah’s Exit Add to November Political Turmoil
AZHAR HUSSAIN
SRINAGAR, Oct 30: Kashmir has a habit of turning its autumns into political winters and this November arrives already heavy with consequence. Barely three days after Omar Abdullah swore in four new ministers and raised his council to nine, the National Conference is managing not a celebration but a mutiny. The expansion was meant to end months of speculation and reward loyalty. Instead it has opened a wound that the leadership will struggle to dress before the winter sets in.
The arithmetic of grievance is simple. Ali Mohammad Sagar, Mir Saifullah, Shamima Firdous and Altaf Ahmad Wani were inducted, Satish Sharma was dropped, and the resulting cabinet is drawn almost wholly from the Valley, with Jammu’s wider region barely represented. Jammu’s resentment has been sharper still, since the dropping of its independent minister reads as a verdict on the region’s place in the government. Those overlooked were hardly obscure. Mubarak Gul and Abdul Majeed Larmi, seasoned legislators both, openly expressed their disappointment, and as many as eleven MLAs backing the government stayed away from the oath-taking. On Friday, eighteen legislators, seventeen from the NC and one independent, met in Srinagar to chart their response, reportedly arguing that ministers who have completed two years should make way for fresh faces.
What lends this revolt its edge is its aim. The anger is directed less at Omar Abdullah than at the circle around him: Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Choudhary, advisor Nasir Aslam Wani, Rajya Sabha member Shami Oberoi and minister Javed Rana, men seen as architects of the list and gatekeepers of access. That distinction matters. Rebels who target the court while sparing the king usually want to be heard, not to topple. Yet the strategy is perilous. A Chief Minister who publicly asked his MLAs to stop contacting him has already shown limited patience for supplication, and wounded pride seldom stays inside party walls. Sajad Lone has seized on that remark, and the BJP has predicted that a storm will break by November 3.
Into this opening steps the Peoples Democratic Party. Its Foundation Day, postponed in July because of devastating rains, is now being pushed to November 2 in Srinagar. What began as an act of solidarity has become an accident of perfect timing. A rally that would have been ritual in July now doubles as a referendum on the ruling party’s cohesion. Mehbooba Mufti will address a Valley that has watched the promise of restored special status shrink into administrative routine, and she will not lack material. For a party reduced to just three seats in the last Assembly elections, the opportunity is to argue that the government is neither united nor principled, and that dignity and dialogue still have a consistent champion.
Yet capitalising demands more than eloquence. The PDP’s trouble has never been slogans but organisation and credibility, and memories of its alliance with the BJP still linger. Disgruntled NC legislators are unlikely to migrate to a party with three MLAs. What Mehbooba can realistically harvest is moral space and the attention of disillusioned voters, which is valuable but perishable. A party that wins the argument but not the ground has only rehearsed a comeback.
That is where Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi becomes the genuine wild card. He has confirmed that he will resign from both the party and his Srinagar Lok Sabha seat on November 3, the 26th death anniversary of his father, Aga Syed Mehdi, accusing the leadership of collective betrayal over its post-election shift. He has said he may contest the by-election as an independent after consulting the people. Farooq Abdullah’s dare to return to voters without the party’s name has become the premise of his campaign. The date is theatrical but also shrewd, fusing grief, legacy and grievance into a single day that follows the PDP’s rally and lands in the middle of the NC’s crisis.
The dent he can create is larger than his single seat. Ruhullah offers what neither disgruntled legislators nor the PDP possess: a mandate won on personal credibility, a devoted base across Srinagar and Budgam, and a narrative of sacrifice, since he surrenders a seat rather than clinging to it. Resignation is the political equivalent of burning one’s boats, and in a region wary of leaders who preach principle while enjoying office, that carries weight. For Mubarak Gul and others who feel unheard, he provides a visible address for discontent, even if they never formally leave. The NC would be left with a single Lok Sabha member and a by-election in its own heartland, a contest it can ill afford after losing the Budgam by-poll last year. If the dissidents, the PDP’s revived rhetoric and Ruhullah’s moral appeal converge on one grievance, the NC’s problem stops being about berths and becomes about identity.
Caution is warranted all the same. Eighteen dissidents are not a majority, and Omar’s government faces no immediate arithmetical threat. Berths on boards, portfolio changes and quiet reconciliation have defused such rebellions before, and the NC retains the machinery, the numbers and a leader who has weathered harder winters. Farooq Abdullah’s challenge may also prove prophetic, since independents struggle against organised machinery, and Ruhullah has not yet revealed whether he will build a party. Much will depend on how Omar answers: with accommodation, or with the same brusqueness that inflamed matters. Kashmir’s politics punish both complacency and overreach, and November will show who is guilty of which.
