Engineer Rashid’s interim bail may impact dynamics of Kashmir's electoral politics

The release of jailed Lok Sabha member, Engineer Rashid, on interim bail by a Delhi court will have far-reaching consequences on the political scene and the upcoming J&K Assembly elections, in particular.

Rashid's physical presence in rallies and meetings can change the very dynamics of electoral politics in the union territory.

He fought the Lok Sabha election from jail against former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah of the National Conference (NC) and Sajad Gani Lone of the Peoples Conference (PC) from the Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency.

He won that election and Omar Abdullah finished a distant second while Sajad Lone was a remote third.

There are 16 Assembly segments in the Baramulla Lok Sabha seat out of which Engineer Rashid had a clear lead in 14 seats except in Budgam and Pattan.

The only manifesto of Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittihad party (AIP) was the release of the party founder during the Lok Sabha polls. There was no other promise that the party made to the voters.

The interim bail to Engineer Rashid is the judicial vindication of the voters’ verdict. That the interim bail has been granted only till October 2 when voting for the last phase of the J&K Assembly elections would end, proves the supremacy of the judiciary in the country because the court has indicated that his final release will be determined by judicial scrutiny and not by the voters’ verdict.

Both NC and PDP in addition to PC are now saying that he is the proxy of the BJP and the Centre has only released him to cut into the vote bank of these regional mainstream political parties.

What Engineer Rashid is, will be decided neither by the NC and the PDP nor the PC. If these parties are connecting the mere 22-day-long interim bail of Engineer Rashid to the outcome of his incarceration by the Centre then the memory of these political parties appears to be short-lived.

NC founder, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was released after long years of imprisonment on January 2, 1968. Before this, the government withdrew the conspiracy case against him which was being tried by the trial court.

Sheikh received an unprecedented welcome on his return to Kashmir. Almost the entire Valley turned out to receive the ‘Lion who had been released from the cage’.

Nobody then called the late Sheikh an ‘Indian agent or a proxy of the Centre’. It was the freedom of their most popular leader for Kashmiris.

This memory is still fresh in the minds of the common Kashmiri while the rivals of Engineer Rashid might have conveniently decided to forget it.

Engineer Rashid is no match to the late Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, but then his rivals in the NC, the PDP and the PC are also no equals of the late Sheikh.

If the public sympathy for this incarcerated leader, who was released for a short period by the court because the voters chose him as a member of the country’s Parliament, holds sway with the people, traditional Kashmir-centric political parties would find it very difficult to stand the storm Rashid is likely to create.

Whatever, way his interim bail works out with the voters, his presence is definitely to change the very dynamics of Kashmir’s electoral politics in the coming days.

Underplaying the political challenge he poses to the NC, PDP and the PC by merely calling him ‘an agent of the Centre or a proxy of the BJP’ has already outlived its political utility for two very strong reasons.

One is that Engineer Rashid has been in jail since 2019 and that is longer than any of his rivals in the Kashmir-centric political parties can claim to have suffered in his/her political career.

Second, the allegation that he had been released to defeat the traditional pro-Kashmir parties did not work when he was allowed to stand in the elections when he filed nomination papers from Tihar Jail.

If voters rejected the idea that he was allowed to stand for elections by filing nomination papers from jail, in all likelihood the same voters cannot be made to believe that he is going back to jail after 22 days because he was promised a 22-day vacation to defeat the rivals of the BJP.