When the House turned into a hall of mirrors

Srinagar, Oct 25: The election to the four J&K Rajya Sabha seats held on Friday threw up results on expected lines with the ruling National Conference (NC) securing three seats and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning a solitary seat but the contest was more than about winners and losers.

According to political analysts, the expected results have exposed many political players in the region and cast aspersions even on the NC’s alliance partner, Congress, the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a host of independent legislators, and even the NC itself.

The results with BJP getting 31 votes, three more than its 28 MLAs, on the fourth seat on which its J&K unit President Satpal Sharma was contesting against NC spokesman Imran Nabi Dar, suggest that BJP would have managed to secure these votes anyway.

Political analysts said that this illustrates that both the Congress and PDP would have been better off abstaining than throwing their weight behind NC despite having differences.

These polls also illustrated how dependent the NC is on Congress despite having 41 legislators.

The NC, including Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, said that all 41 of its votes were valid and duly displayed by each party MLA before the designated polling agent, Showkat Ahmad Mir.

Talking to Greater Kashmir, senior NC leader and MLA Pampore, Justice (Retd) Hasnain Masoodi said that they knew what happened but not who did it.

“The NC legislators voted in favour of the party candidates. However, it remains to be seen which legislators deliberately invalidated their votes and who voted for the BJP candidate,” he said.

Masoodi, who has also served as a Member of Parliament, said when it comes to narrative building in Kashmir, the ones who pretend to be against the BJP and its ideology also facilitated the victory of the rightwing party.

“We are only sure about our own votes. We can’t confirm if the other parties or the seven independents voted for us or the BJP,” he said.

Meanwhile, party insiders suggested that NC believes that CPI (M) legislator from Kulgam, Muhammad Yusuf Targami, and Awami Itehad Party (AIP) legislator, Sheikh Khursheed, also voted for the NC nominees.

They said that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s Meraj Malik only voted for one NC candidate, Choudhary Ramzan, on Seat No 1 and abstained from voting on the remaining three seats.

The J&K Rajya Sabha polls have brought the group of seven independent MLAs, which also includes a minister in the NC-led government, under the scanner for possible cross-voting.

Besides the extra votes that the BJP got in addition to the votes of its 28 legislators that contributed to their J&K President Satpal Sharma’s win on Seat No 4, what has also come under scrutiny is the intention of legislators who “rendered” invalid their votes.

Political analyst and veteran journalist Muhammad Sayeed Malik told Greater Kashmir that the way things panned out in the J&K Rajya Sabha elections hint at an “understanding at the level of leaders”.

“One cannot rule that out,” he said. “A clandestine understanding between the parties is a possibility.”

Malik said that given Kashmir’s situation, the balance of power remains critical, and one could make such decisions for the “sense of survival”.

“Some independents, who had promised to vote against the BJP, seemed to be already in the BJP’s kitty,” he said. “It is also a possibility that some parties, despite not being comfortable with the BJP, also supported them to keep NC under check as the ruling party seems to care more about their own survival than governance.”

Meanwhile, opposition leaders are alleging a “fixed match” between NC and BJP, suggesting that NC might have deliberately conceded a seat to BJP or engineered the outcome.

Talking to Greater Kashmir, People’s Conference (PC) President and MLA Handwara, Sajad Gani Lone said that the acceptance to the dialogue about seat-sharing had come from the horse’s mouth.

“Farooq (Abdullah) Sahab himself admitted that the BJP offered them three seats and one for themselves, which means they were in a dialogue,” he said. “If they had a dialogue, did they inform their alliance partners – Congress, and did they inform PDP and the independents?”

Lone said that the NC also needed to come clear on why they cast 31 votes for Gurwinder Singh Oberoi , also known as Shammi Oberoi, when he only needed 29 votes.

“This was done to lessen the burden of horse trading,” he said. “CM Omar (Abdullah) Sahab says he knows about the deal between the BJP and those who voted for them. If he does, he is morally and constitutionally obliged to inform people of J&K who cross-voted.”

Lone said that this, ironically, was the seat that CM Omar was offering Congress.

He said cross-voting was the making of a mix of all and not only the independents, but also NC legislators.

“I’m 100 percent sure that NC legislators also voted for the BJP,” Lone said.

The BJP’s win on the fourth seat signals cracks in the alliance with either some of the alliance MLAs not following the script or that the alliance was not as secure as believed.

The fact that the BJP, being a party with only 28 seats, won also suggests MLAs from the alliance might be drifting.

According to analysts, whether the votes were cast in return for incentives, pressure, or dissatisfaction, this opens a vulnerability.

“Parties will now fear defections or secret deals. For the BJP, winning the fourth seat is symbolically important.  It shows it can penetrate what seemed a strong local alliance.  This may embolden the BJP in J&K and in national politics,” a Kashmir watcher in New Delhi said.

He said that could also likely widen the internal rifts and mistrust between NC and Congress, which is already feeling sidelined, and the mistrust among the parties could make coalition-management harder.

A top J&K BJP leader said, “If we can win when we are outnumbered, imagine what we can do when we are stronger.”

Meanwhile, people in Kashmir see the outcome as evidence of horse-trading and lack of transparency battering the region for decades.

Adil Ahmad, a political science scholar from Dalgate, said that while the ruling NC secured three seats and numerically did what it needed, the fourth seat loss must sting them.

“NC now needs to explain why its numbers didn’t translate into a clean sweep.  Now it will be hard for it to manage trust within its alliance and ensure no internal sabotage,” he said.

According to a political commentator, as far as NC’s alliance partners, Congress is concerned, they might feel uneasy and rethink why they supported the NC-led effort if they didn’t get a seat of their own.

They said that the party might demand clearer terms next time or consider its future posture.

“And for the PDP and independents who supported the alliance, they question they would be asking themselves is if they were just window-dressing, did their support count,” he said. “For the BJP, this is a clear win, not just a seat, but a psychological win. It reinforces its image that the BJP can upset political equations even in regions where it is weaker. The party might likely use this win to claim momentum, ask for greater say locally, and push on governance issues from the opposition bench.”