CPM leader Yusuf Tarigami holds ground in PDP’s South Kashmir bastion

KULGAM: On Tuesday, when Kulgam district’s four seats vote in the second of the five-phase polls for the J&K assembly, the fate of two political personalities will be sealed. Yusuf Tarigami, Kashmir’s lone Communist stalwart who has been representing the Kulgam seat for the past 18 years, and Sakina Ittoo, CM Omar Abdullah’s sole woman cabinet minister who is contesting from Noorabad.

Parties have been looking at south Kashmir differently. Omar once said that south Kashmir is evolving as NC’s cancer, its heart and mind beating for the PDP. But despite being its strong base, having 12 of 16 berths from the region, PDP has failed to wrest Kulgam from CPIM’s Tarigami or the two Congress seats of Dooru and Kokernag in south Kashmir. In the last elections, it failed retain Noorabad that it had won in 2002. The other two seats from Kulgam, Homshalibugh and Devsar, had elected PDP members to the assembly in 2008.

This peculiarity is making the contest interesting and intense in south Kashmir, more so in Kulgam and Noorabad. Noorabad is less developed, less literate and partly mountainous compared with Kulgam.

Militancy always existed, but rarely impacted participation in polls. Separatists have a better appeal in Kulgam than in Noorabad, but still it has sent a Communist to the assembly in the past three polls.

“Some newspapers have written about us (Kulgam) that the red (Communism) here is green (Islam) inside, which is a fact,” says Ghulam Nabi, who runs a shop in the heart of the town. “This dichotomy existed here because the greens were always staying away from the process making reds to win and there are sections of people this time who want to make the necessary correction.”

Kulgam was one of the five berths that had elected a Muslim United Front candidate, Abdul Razak Mir, in 1987’s assembly elections. With the rise of militancy in 1990, the four MUF men other than Mir put in their papers. Mir was later killed by militants.

This marked the conversion of the belt into an epicenter of counterinsurgency, crushing the Islamist and the separatist elements. Then a Communist emerged as the main leader, a position the PDP is seeking to wrest this time.

But representing an area for three terms makes Tarigami a seasoned politician who has huge influence. He has never been a minister but has always stayed with the ruling coalition, in 2002 and in 2008. This influence is fetching him some help in 2014: NC has fielded a weak candidate against him, so has Congress.

But NC’s Imran Nabi, a mass-communications graduate, says he is not weak. “Tarigami has failed to connect with the youth unlike me,” he said. “In 2008, he won by 236 won and that had come from Pandit migrants in Jammu. This time the Pandits are voting for the BJP.” In Noorabad, Ittoo was on top of the charts until last week. But the balance tilted as a Gujjar leader changed loyalties, by joining the PDP after deserting the Congress.