Pandit candidates fielded by Congress and LJP may ruin BJP’s chances in Kashmir's Habbakadal

HABBAKADAL (SRINAGAR): Habbakadal was seen as the first seat in the Kashmir valley that BJP could possibly win, thanks to the sizeable chunk of resident and migrant Pandit voters. But conversations with voters of all communities from the seat postpoll indicate that BJP’s added emphasis on migrant voters may not have worked as per its wish. For, the proportion of votes polled from the Pandit community was not very high due to multiple reasons, and also does not appear to have gone en masse to BJP.

“I did not vote because I do not trust most candidates here. This election is all about buying votes from our community for political ends, so I didn’t go,” said Ganpatyar locality resident and a member of the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti, Ratan Chaku. Curiously, other family members of his family voted and for BJP, he conceded. Similar divisions within Pandits could be seen in other parts of the constituency too. Sheshyar locality resident Guddy Channa’s son and husband voted BJP but she voted for the Lok JanShakti Party candidate and fellow Pandit, Sanjay Saraf. “He is a distant cousin and helps us locally. Why would I vote for anybody else then,” she asked.

While ardent BJP voters from the community chose the party, there were those migrant as well as resident Pandits who could not vote since their names were missing from the electoral rolls. Another factor which may have worked against BJP was the presence of two other notable Pandit community candidates who have some base among local residents — ex-MLA and Congress candidate Raman Matoo and Lok Jan Shakti Party candidate Sanjay Saraf — and may end up splitting the already less than expected votes polled.

More importantly, there has been a substantial rise in polling by the Muslim community. As first time voter Aasiya Jan, who resides close to the Kral Khurd police station explained: “Earlier, we could not vote because we feared attacks and reprisals from those supporting boycott. This time, the fear is not there. I voted for Saraf bhai of LJP.”

Srinagar District Election Officer Farooq Ahmed Shah confirmed the trend. “Resident Pandits are very few in number and the rise in polling is the second highest since the onset of militancy, naturally it is on.