Jammu and Kashmir: In her hometown, a few people turn up in Mehbooba Mufti’s rally

Former Chief Minister and president of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Mehbooba Mufti, like her former ally Bharatiya Janata Party has miserably failed to draw more people into her poll rally even at her home town in Bijbihara, Anantnag on Monday.

Despite invoking her signature soft separatism and militant sentiment, only a few people showed up in her election rally. And the wrath of some disgruntled young men who threw rocks on her motorcade while she was on her way to the venue added insult to injury.

Mufti is contesting election from Anantnag parliamentary seat. The constituency considered as the PDP bastion is sprawled across four powder keg districts--Anantnag, Kulgam, Pulwama , Shopian--and is slated to go to polls in three phases on April 23, 28 and May 6.

Although a total number of 20 candidates filed nomination papers from the seat, Mufti is in direct contest with Congress Party's Ghulam Ahmad Mir who has a good influence in several parts of southern Kashmir.

On Monday afternoon, in  a rather downcast mood, Mufti reminded her scanty gathering about how she protected people in Valley from the wrath of state-backed militia during the troubled nineties.

"I protected the families of militants and their relatives from the oppression of security forces" said Mufti.

Mufti's statements, however, do not find any takers even in her stronghold south Kashmir where people are taking her every single word with a pinch of salt.

" In 2014 elections I took part in PDP rallies with enthusiasm and also voted for the party. But everyone knows better what she did thereafter", said 27-year-old Khurshid Ahmad, a resident of Mufti's hometown Bijbihara.

Like Ahmad many other unhappy young men in southern Kashmir feel deceived by the party.

Ashiq Hussain, a postgraduate student at a local university told National Herald that Kashmir was going through its worst of times and it was the result of the wrong policies of Mufti and her ally Bharatiya Janata Party.

"Her hands are stained with the blood of Kashmiris but she still has the audacity to ask for votes", said a fuming Hussain.

After stitching alliance with Bharatiya Janata Party  in 2015, PDP lost both its political credibility and space in Kashmir. The alliance was largely seen as "unholy" and many political observers had anticipated the decline of PDP.

After Bharatiya Janata Party suddenly walked out of the alliance on June 19, 2018, and since then PDP has been making desperate efforts to regain its lost ground by reviving its old strategy of invoking the militant sentiment.

In January this year, Mufti visited the homes of some militants in troubled Shopian and Pulwama districts to strike a chord with the militants families. The move, however, met with a sharp criticism and cut no ice with both the militants and general masses.

For many political observers, the low participation of people in Mufti's poll rallies is symptomatic of her defeat.

"I think this time around the odds of her win are little. Fewer people are seen in her rallies even at hometown. Her political rival the Congress seems a step ahead", says a Valley-based political analyst Shahnawaz Mantoo.

PDP won the Anantnag parliamentary seat in 2004 and 2014.