As Jammu and Kashmir prepares for the third and final phase of the Assembly polls on Tuesday, over the past few days two candidates with a Tihar connection were busy making last-minute efforts to reach out to voters.
One is 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru’s brother Aijaz Ahmad Guroo who is contesting as an Independent from Sopore and the other is Baramulla MP Engineer Rashid’s brother Sheikh Khurshid who is contesting from the family stronghold of Langate as an Independent.
While Afzal’s 2013 execution and subsequent burial in Tihar Jail has been a burning political issue in the Kashmir Valley, Aijaz does not talk about it and has publicly declared he will not seek votes in his brother’s name as their ideologies are different. Instead, his campaign revolves around development and “political step-motherly treatment” of Sopore.
During a door-to-door campaign in the constituency, he tells a woman that he did not go to the doorsteps of “rich people”. He hands out a few posters bearing his election symbol, his picture and a message that reads: “Empower Sopore, build a better future with the Tehreek-e-Awam (people’s movement)”. “Distribute them among your friends and relatives,” Aijaz tells the woman.
Aijaz is among the 20 candidates in Sopore, a separatist and militant stronghold of yesteryears and a bastion of late Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah Geelani who represented the seat thrice before the militancy erupted in the Valley in 1990.
In the 2014 Assembly polls, the last time state elections were held in Jammu and Kashmir, Sopore was won by the Congress’s Abdul Rashid Dar who defeated Nazir Ahmad Naikoo of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). This time, the Congress has fielded Dar again. While the Congress is in a pre-poll alliance with the National Conference (NC), both have fielded candidates in Sopore for a “friendly fight” after failing to settle on a common candidate.
The 58-year-old Aijaz is a resident of Doabagah village and a former government servant who resigned in 2014, a year after his brother was hanged. He does not seem to have many takers, with his entourage made up of fewer than a dozen people. Afzal’s wife Tabasum Guroo too has distanced herself from his campaign, saying it was his decision to contest the polls. “It has nothing to do with ‘Shaheed’ Afzal or the Guru family. It pains me that my husband’s and Aijaz’s photos are aired simultaneously (by channels),” she says.
Khurshid, on the other hand, is riding on his brother’s popularity and is aiming to win Langate that Rashid bagged in 2008 and 2014. A government teacher, Khurshid quit his job after his brother defeated NC vice-president Omar Abdullah and People’s Conference chief Sajad Lone from Baramulla in the recent Lok Sabha polls while in Tihar.
Even those who are impressed by Rashid’s political rhetoric are not sure of the “real story” behind his sudden release from jail on parole. The NC and the PDP have already dubbed him an “agent of Delhi”. Rashid argues he has shown the courage to stand up to Modi and that is the reason that he continues to be in jail — since 2019 in a case of alleged terror funding — while the others who were under house arrest after the abrogation of Article 370 were set free.
In one of his first remarks after stepping out of jail, Rashid dismissed talks of him being a BJP proxy. “How can a man who has been the victim of the BJP’s politics be its proxy?” he asked. The Baramulla MP had been lodged in Tihar jail in connection with a case of alleged terror funding since 2019, before vowing to fight Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s narrative of “Naya Kashmir”.
Criticising the abrogation of Article 370 and subsequent measures by the Modi government, Rashid said: “Aapne Union territory bana diya. Demote kar diya hum ko (You made us a Union territory, demoted us from a state).”
Khurshid is locked in a contest with 15 others in Langate but his toughest challenge is likely to come from Irfan Paditpuri of the People’s Conference. While Khurshid is seemingly banking on Rashid’s brand of politics, murmurs against the Baramulla MP preferring his kin over other candidates have emerged among the people.
“It is not khandani raj (dynastic rule)’. It is khandani khidmat (dynastic service). I was earning over a lakh (as a government teacher. I sacrificed that for the people,” the candidate told a recent gathering, trying to dispel people’s apprehensions.
