A scenic beauty par excellence, Jammu and Kashmir has been a special story in India, mostly for political reasons. It goes to the polls after 10 years in three phases on September 18, 25 and October 1. Results will be declared on October 8, when votes polled in Haryana state election will also be counted.
The upcoming assembly polls are significant in many ways. It is the first election since the Narendra Modi government ended its special status by abrogating Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir in 2019. It is the first election since it lost its statehood to become a Union Territory, losing Ladakh as its part, which became a separate Union Territory. It is also the first election after a fresh delimitation of assembly, and the first election after 1951 to be held without a Jammu and Kashmir constitution in force.
How Jammu and Kashmir voted in its first assembly election
Jammu and Kashmir became a part of India under dramatic circumstances. The British had left the country sharply divided into hundreds of practically sovereign units in the form of princely states. Jammu and Kashmir was a big one, with its king Hari Singh harbouring the ambition of making it ‘the Switzerland of the East’.
Authorised under the Indian Independence Act of 1947, the king initially decided to remain independent but newly formed Pakistan invaded Kashmir only two months after the British partitioned India and left. Facing a certain defeat, the king acceded to India, signing the Instrument of Accession, similar to those signed by hundreds others. By the time, Jammu and Kashmir became a part of India, Pakistan had captured about a third of the princely state. That remains with Pakistan as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) — though Pakistan has attempted to integrate its regions with its own territory through various instruments.
While India continues to press for the release of the land — now divided under the jurisdiction of two Union Territories, with Ladakh having the largest chunk — Pakistan has maintained its interest in electoral, political and developmental processes in Jammu and Kashmir.
When the first assembly election happened in 1951, after India adopted its Constitution, Jammu and Kashmir was a full state but it did not yet have its separate constitution.
It was a unique election as the largest political party Congress of then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the stalwart from the freedom struggle, sided with Jammu and Kashmir’s National Conference leader Sheikh Abdullah, who had been appointed the executive head of state — then called the prime minister — by the king soon after acceding to India.
The state then had 75 assembly seats — 43 in the Kashmir Valley region, 30 in the Jammu region and two in Ladakh. Sheikh Abdulla’s National Conference won all 43 seats from the Kashmir Valley unopposed. In Jammu, Praja Parishad was set for a fight but boycotted the polls after 13 of its nominees were disqualified. In Ladakh, Sheikh Abdullah’s associates won the polls.
Thus, in the first Jammu and Kashmir election, all 75 seats went to Sheikh Abdullah’s NC. There was no Opposition bench in the assembly. The NC’s slogan was — ‘One Leader, One Party and One Programme’.
The first election under J&K Constitution
By the time, Jammu and Kashmir voted next for its assembly, a political understanding had been arrived at and a separate constitution had been assigned to it. Sheikh Abdullah had been sacked in 1953 after his deputy Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad opposed his predecessor for advocating independence.
This election saw about 70 per cent voting in the 28 constituencies that actually went to the polls. Of the 75 assembly seats, 47 were declared unopposed, giving the NC a majority even before the votes were cast. In the final tally, the NC won 68 of the 75 assembly seats to extend its governance in Jammu and Kashmir.
The first vote after Emergency
The national emergency imposed by the Indira Gandhi government in 1975 remains a watershed episode in Indian politics. Just a year before Emergency was clamped, suspending most of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution of India, Indira Gandhi had reached an agreement with Sheikh Abdullah.
Sheikh Abdullah had been in jail for several years in multiple phases — during the rule of Nehru, his successor Lal Bahadur Shastri and later his daughter Indira Gandhi. The 1974 accord ensured the return of Sheikh Abdullah as the J&K head of the government in exchange for dropping the independence demand by the influential Kashmiri leader.
This accord brought Sheikh Abdullah Jammu and Kashmir’s chief ministership after about 22 years — interestingly with the Congress choosing him as its candidate. The NC party founded by Sheikh Abdullah had merged with the Indian National Congress in the 1967 assembly election. After becoming the chief minister, Sheikh Abdullah revived a Plebiscite Party, which had earlier boycotted elections and mobilised its cadres to re-erect the National Conference, which won the 1977 assembly held after the Janata Party government of the Centre dismissed the state government following the fall of India Gandhi post-Emergency.
The number of seats in Jammu and Kashmir increased to 76, and Sheikh Abdullah’s NC won 47 to get a comfortable majority in the legislative assembly. The debutant Janata Party got 13 and the Congress 11. So, in a way, the Congress was decimated both at the Centre and Jammu and Kashmir in the shadow of Emergency.
The post-militancy election
The years of late 1980s and the 1990s were tumultuous for Jammu and Kashmir as Pakistan’s “thousand cuts” policy of exporting terrorism to India created an atmosphere of fear and violence in the state, particularly the Valley. Kashmiri Hindus were singled out and attacked — most fled the state. The political atmosphere had vitiated especially after the 1987 assembly election that is largely believed to have been massively rigged.
In January 1990, terror outfits and their sympathiser clerics announced from mosques — “ralive, tsaliv ya galive [convert to Islam, leave the land or die]”. Other slogans raised by the mobs that poured into the streets in tens of thousands were — “Death to India” and “Death to Kafirs”. Scores of Kashmiri Hindus were killed and women brutalised.
The election returned to Jammu and Kashmir after nine years in 1996. The election was announced even as an estimated 4,000 terrorists were still roaming in Jammu and Kashmir. It had entered the next phase as the security forces had largely foiled Pakistan’s deep state attempt but Islamabad’s establishment had started recruiting foreign (mostly Afghan) terrorists to infiltrate into India. These new foreign recruits came from the hardened stock that had fought with the Soviet forces through the 1980s, but were jobless and money supply had dried up after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of the Red Army from Afghanistan.
The NC emerged as the lead party with 40 seats in the 87-member house, falling short of a majority. The Congress came second with 26 seats. The NC’s Farooq Abdullah formed the next government, and three years later joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s coalition. The 1996 election was an important turning point in Jammu and Kashmir’s history as it largely settled the political debate of separatism in the state politics.
The last election
Elections were regularly held in Jammu and Kashmir until 2014, when the voters gave a sharply divided mandate — parties with starkly different ideologies, the Peoples Democratic Party and the BJP emerged biggest blocs in the state assembly.
The PDP won 28 seats — 25 from the Kashmir region, which had 46 constituencies. The BJP won 25 — all from the Jammu region, which had 37 constituencies. The NC got 15 — 12 from Kashmir and three from Jammu.
The Congress was the only party that won seats in all three regions — five from Jammu, four from Kashmir and three from Ladakh that had four constituencies. But the Congress had the least number of legislators among the four major parties.
The government formation became a tedious task. No government was possible without the PDP or the BJP. The local rival powers — the PDP and the NC — were not ready to patch up to form the government. Ultimately, a formula was arrived at between the BJP and the PDP. But that government collapsed in June 2018, with the PDP alleging that the BJP wanted to push its “muscular” policy in Kashmir.
A year later, the Modi government brought resolutions in Parliament, ending special status of Jammu and Kashmir, and abrogating Article 370, ceasing its operation there and also nullifying Article 35A, a part of the annexure. The government also brought a state reorganisation law, creating two Union Territories — J&K and Ladakh — in place of the existing state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Union Territory has voted in local (District Development Council, DDC, polls in 2020) and parliamentary elections (2019 and 2024) since then but this is the first time in 10 years that about 8.7 million voters would use their franchise to elect their local legislative assembly and a government.
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