While the J&K Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), led by Mehbooba Mufti, has been decimated from 28 Assembly seats in the 2014 elections to three seats in the 2024 polls, the outfit has indeed received a double shocker. On the one hand, her party got decimated while on the other, her daughter Iltija Mufti lost her first election from the erstwhile strong bastion of the Muftis-the Srigufwara-Bijbehara constituency in the Anantnag district.
Mehbooba Mufti reacted to the loss of her party with a bold face. She said, "It is encouraging that the people came out and voted in such large numbers. So far as PDP is concerned, everybody must accept the people's verdict. Winning and losing is part of the election process."
Her seniors leaders, Abdul Rehman Veeri, her uncle, Sartaj Madni, former minister, Gulam Nabi Hanjoora, Zahoor Ahmad Mir, Abdul Gaffar Sofi, Asiya Naqash, and Mehboob Beg also could not succeed in any seat in these elections.
Three victors of PDP are Waheed ur Rehman Parra from Pulwama, Fayaz Ahmad Mir from Kupwara, and Rafiq Ahmad Naik from the Tral constituency.
Of these, Waheed ur Rehman Parra has had greater success from his popularity among the youth than the influence of PDP in the Pulwama constituency. Fayaz Ahmad Mir was pitted against Nasir Aslam Wani of the NC, and for Wani, Kupwara was a virgin political constituency. Tral was won by Rafiq Ahmad Naik as the Naik family is politically well entrenched in the Tral constituency. The NC had left this seat for the Congress in their pre-poll alliance agreement.
The net deduction from all this is that the PDP has reached the nadir of its political existence in J&K. The party was formed by the late Mufti Muhammad Sayeed in 1999, and 2024 has virtually brought the curtain down on this party.
Left lonely and shorn of its past political clout in these elections, that's what the PDP has found from its declared role to play the kingmaker's after the 2024 polls are over.
Whether the party would be able to resurrect itself after having been flattened by its rivals in the NC would have to be watched.
Inept handling of political alliances, surprising choice of fielding her daughter Iltija Mufti by shifting the well-entrenched Abdul Rehman Veeri from Srigufwara-Bijbehara to Anantnag, and listening to advisors whose political experience is restricted to their drawing rooms are among the major reasons for the PDP rout in the 2024 assembly polls.
In politics, however, nobody is ultimately out unless one chooses to call it a day.
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