Udhampur’s Lacklustre Polls: What’s In The Offing With Withered Faces And Missing Enthusiasm?

“In one of the most complex constituencies of Jammu and Kashmir, with an extremely diverse linguistic and ethnic composition, the interplay of history, anti-incumbency and local aspirations will play a role”

Latief U Zaman Deva*

Udhampur Parliamentary constituency has witnessed fierce electoral competition at least twice in the recent past.

D.D. Thakur versus Karan Singh

During the 1980 elections Devi Das Thakur, a prominent Minister in Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s cabinet and the joint candidate of National Conference (NC) and Congress (INC), was pitted against Dr Karan Sigh, the scion of Dogra kingdom and a Congress deserter in the caretaker central government headed then by Choudhary Charan Singh.

Despite the participation of Indira Gandhi in the campaign against her erstwhile cabinet colleague and Abdullah’s intensive efforts for the success of the alliance candidate, Dr Karan Singh succeeded in retaining the seat by obtaining 53.38% polled valid votes against the Indira wave sweeping North India.

Initially, the going appeared to be tough for Karan Singh but a one-liner in the Sheikh’s speech in Doda urging the public to seize the electoral option for ‘finishing the last vestige of Dogra Raj (despotic rule) led to polarisation. The resultant empathy that went to Karan Singh’s favour pushed D.D. Thakur down to 36.64% vote share only at the hustings.

All the same, the bitterness tasted by the winning candidate in this constituency persuaded him to try his luck from Jammu-Poonch-Rajouri segment in the 1984 elections but he couldn’t withstand the unsettling impact of sympathy wave post the assassination of Indira Gandhi as fallout of the Operation Blue Star in Amritsar. Even though this time the NC had come to his rescue by fielding Choudhary Shabir Salaria. Surprisingly, Salaria garnered almost all minority votes including those of the Sikh community, relegating Karan Singh behind him in the counting and final results.

Backfire Impact of NC-Cong alliance

The 2014 Udhampur election bore striking similarities to the political landscape of the 1980 elections in North India and the neighbouring Jammu constituency. However, this time, the competition was between the Congress, represented by Ghulam Nabi Azad, and the BJP, represented by Dr Jitender Singh, a former medical faculty member turned political activist. Ultimately, the BJP candidate secured the seat, driven primarily by the wave of saffronisation among the vulnerable electorate.

Both the BJP and Congress have won in the constituency multiple times in a row. However, the mistaken belief in consolidating the secular vote has harmed the National Conference (NC). NC’s cadre, always playing second fiddle to Congress, has lost enthusiasm for strengthening the party, resulting in reduced support. This has allowed Congress to dominate, but they’ve also failed to rejuvenate themselves and benefit from NC’s voter base.

Stopping the surge of Hindutva by cobbling together NC and INC is construed by the non-Muslim Dogra population as a threat to their religious identity, given the background and ancestry of this segment of the population in the constituency. For them, the reiteration of the freedom movement against despotic rule is a sacrilege.  A natural corollary for hybridization between two extremes lay in respecting the local sentiments and genuine aspirations for combating the tiger in his den.

Parliamentary elections from 1998 to 2019

This table represents the winning and runner-up parties along with their respective vote percentages for each parliamentary election held in the given years.

Ethnic landscape

The constituency is a miniature Jammu and Kashmir as its inhabitants are Dogras, Koshur, Gujjar, Pahari, Bhaderwahi, Gaddi, Punjabi, Padri, Pashto, and others. After 1947, these people representing diverse ethnicities and cultures are living peaceful lives. The occasional acts of violence during the last thirty years didn’t impact their mutual relationships to the extent normally one could have anticipated.

In a highly rugged terrain and adverse conditions, they have tethered to their roots to the core but political and social fault lines are visible but manageable. The Dogras and their co-religionists align themselves with the cow belt while others largely to what emanates from Srinagar. Hence the two divergent linkages are also reflected in the political discourses.

The composition of ethnicities:

Projected population- Voter ratio:

Note: The District Decadal Growth Rates in population vary, so using a uniform rate of 23.70 UT level adopted by Election authorities to calculate the projected population (PP) is misleading. This analysis uses district-specific decadal growth rates to determine the PP figures. In Doda and Ramban districts, the voter-to-PP ratio is 53% & 53.20% as opposed to the national average of 60%, which denies voting rights to around 50,000 eligible individuals who should be registered as voters. (This is similar to the case of Anantnag and Kupwara, and either stems from the lackadaisical approach of the election officials or discrepancies during data collection, compilation and collation of Census 2011).

Issues at stake

A striking feature about the registered voters is that the bulk of them are born post-partition and the youth form the largest component of the electorate for whom priorities are myriad but quite different from the traditional ones limited to “Roti, Sadak, Pani”. Social media has expanded their horizons. People now expect their governments to adopt people-friendly Western governance models for better public services. This has shifted grassroots discourse toward tangible issues over emotional manipulation.

This election to the 18^th Lok Sabha navigates new paths in an unconventional manner where the most involved in the electoral fray may be taken aback once the results are out, not necessarily jettisoning the systems in a big way.

Dull campaign

Contrary to aggressive campaigns of 2014 and 2019 in the constituency, the scenario this time around is sombre prime facie due to a lack of popular enthusiasm, anti-incumbency, complacency, and fatigue syndrome associated with the ruling party with a long spell at the national level and in most of the populous States of the country.

If it was a conscious strategy on the part of the BJP to be inconspicuous, the intended purpose has been accomplished as the opposition party has fallen prey to a low-level election campaign preventing it in the process from exposing the failures of the government particularly in reducing poverty, unemployment and price spirals in domestic items of daily consumption.

These failures exist at a national scale. Almost 80 crore people are dependent on food largesse extended by the government. Amidst rampant unemployment, Indians are plunging into inhospitable and life-threatening war theatres like Russia-Ukraine or Israel for employment as battleground warriors or construction workers respectively. With poverty compounded by inequitable distribution of national wealth, the people below the poverty line and slightly above are undergoing the worst challenges in meeting their daily requirements.

The despondency of the under-fed, torn-clothed, and malnourished is invisibilised, at least in India’s cow belt due to a media blitz about shining India backed by morphed socio-economic indicators. This continues to enthuse the gullible, accounting for lesser erosion in popular support than perceived.

Udhampur parliamentary constituency has a 66.40 % Hindu population. Yet, the erosion in BJP’s base is palpable in the said citadel of Hindutva in Jammu and Kashmir as compared to 2014. The 2019 poll scenario was exceptional like 1984 when there was a national level wave.

Azad factor in Chenab Valley

However, the impact of the erosion seems to be getting set off by the magnitude of support the DPAP candidate has in the Chenab Valley. These anti-BJP voters are conscious of the implications of their support to DPAP but the mercurial behaviour of the Congress candidate and his diatribes in the past as a BJP leader and Minister in the PDP-BJP coalition persuade them to project Ghulam Nabi Azad’s party only as the singular and most sought after voice in the Chenab valley whose inhabitants are most underprivileged.

During the parliamentary elections of 2004 and 2009, the existing Congress candidate won on both occasions with margins of 47175 and 13394 votes respectively, registering substantial leads over BJP in this region and District Reasi (now in Jammu constituency), making him successful. The Congress’ fortunes had opened up owing to the Azad factor and the resurgent local Congress Party whose dynamics by now are altogether different.

It was Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah alone who realised the socio-economic backwardness of the region and chose it in 1976 for de-centralised Planning for faster economic growth and development by earmarking an outlay for the region (then  District Doda and at present three Districts of Doda, Kishtwar & Ramban)  at par with Anantnag (now Anantnag, Kulgam, Pulwama & Shopian Districts) despite the latter having more than double the population of the former but an area (11691 square Kilometres) half of the former (5382 Sq kms).

Incidentally, the maiden State Finance Commission set up in 2008 and headed by legendary civil servant Mahmoud-ur-Rehman made recommendations for rectification of inter-district imbalances which have remained unimplemented notwithstanding the expiry of over 14 years.

The region getting the status of a division and a special category area for focussed development and equitable share in employment through codified instruments could be the agenda of the people for support by national and regional parties.

*The author is IAS (Rtd) & former chairman J&K PSC.

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