Every trick in the trade is being tried unabashedly.
In simple arithmetical terms every possible 'arrangement' is being made to deny a majority to its rivals. A split verdict would hand a vital advantage to the BJP which is adept at extracting the best out of such a situation, notes Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir affairs.
Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir will be held in three phases from September 18 while Haryana will go to polls in a single phase on October 1, the Election Commission announced on Friday.
Fate of 271 candidates including two former chief ministers -- Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Ghulam Nabi Azad -- would be sealed on Wednesday, as 16 constituencies of Jammu and Kashmir go to polls in the sixth round of the seven-phase assembly elections.As many as 20,000 additional security forces personnel and nearly 10,000 local policemen have been deployed at 1,268 polling stations set up in the 16 assembly seats spread over five districts.
'INDIA will easily cross 50 seats out of 90 in Jammu and Kashmir.'
Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed on Sunday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's upcoming visit here will be a "turning point" in the history of Jammu and Kashmir and the people of the state have great expectations from it.
Clarifying her stand on alleged custodial death of a ruling National Conference activist, opposition Peoples Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti on Sunday said that her party was not demanding the dismissal of the state government on the issue, but only stepping down of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his junior home minister Nasir Aslam Wani to enable a fair investigation.
The Jammu and Kashmir government has rubbished allegations by the Opposition Peoples Democratic Party about the death of a worker of the ruling National Conference allegedly in police custody. PDP has demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Minister of State for Home Nasir Aslam Wani so that the "judicial probe can proceed impartially'.
The change in Anantnag's demographic after delimitation has added layers of political complexities to the constituency with Pahari-Gujjar, Jammu versus Kashmir dimensions.
An anti-corruption court on Tuesday rejected the plea of the family of the ruling National Conference activist Sayeed Mohammad Yusuf, who allegedly died in police custody on September 30, for a Central Bureau of Investigation probe.
The chief minister visited Ganai's house at Seer Hamdan village in Anantnag district and conveyed his sympathies to the bereaved family.
With the RLD part of the NDA now, Sanjeev Kumar Balyan would expect an easier contest than five years back when the RLD, SP and BSP had an alliance.
Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar has included Mishaal Hussain Malik, wife of jailed terrorist and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik, in his cabinet.
Karra, who became the J&K Congress chief last Friday replacing Vikar Rasool Wani, said a call is already there for all secular parties who are opposed to the "hegemonic attitude" of the BJP to unite.
Malik, who is in jail following his conviction and life sentence in a terror funding case, was brought to the high-security apex court premises in a prison van escorted by armed security personnel without the court's permission.
'Sheikh Abdullah ruled the state with secular values. Post 1953, when he was sacked, corruption took over governance.'
National Investigation Agency officials seized Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar's home in Srinagar on Thursday, March 2, 2023. On December 31, 1999, Zargar was released along with Jaish e Mohammed founder Masood Azhar and the British terrorist Omar Saeed Shaikh in exchange for the passengers and crew on board IC-814, the Indian Airlines flight hijacked from Kathmandu and flown to Kandahar in Afghanistan.
'With all outlets of public expression virtually choked for the last five years, suppressed anger and frustration is looking for an opening via the ballot box.' 'There is no escape from the inevitability of the 'Engineer Rashid' factor surfacing in a big enough way to upset everyone's applecart,' alerts Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the veteran commentator on Kashmir affairs.
'If, as happened in Baramulla during the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the youth in the Valley get triggered enough to jump into the wider fray, the end result would be difficult to predict, especially as the state's post-August 5, 2019 political format remains substantially fragmented and foggy,' points out Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the veteran commentator on Kashmir affairs.
He said that even the security of the Supreme Court would have been put to a serious risk if any untoward incident were to happen.
The Department of Delhi Prisons has suspended four officials, including a deputy superintendent, in connection with the physical appearance of jailed Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front chief Yasin Malik in Supreme Court, a statement said on Saturday.
'My mother feels it will be tough and emotional for her to enter an assembly which has essentially been reduced to a municipality now.' 'My opinion is that even if it is a municipality one cannot cede that space to the BJP.'
Mufti's political graph shows his fondness for courting unpopular, politically hazardous ventures in pursuit of his ultimate objective to vindicate his leadership. Towards the end of his life, Mufti's public profile had come to assume the dimensions of statesmanship. One reason being his willingness to learn from his experience, says Mohammad Sayeed Malik.
Those familiar with intricate Kashmir politics do not rule out further delay in the assembly elections. Primarily, because the BJP having 'invested' so much for so long in Kashmir would try its best to wait a little longer if only to secure the 'gains' it believes to have achieved after its deafening action on August 5, 2019, points out Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the veteran commentator on Kashmir affairs.
Mufti said her father Sayeed was not power hungry and wanted to deliver Jammu and Kashmir from its problems and troubles.
The SSP said the investigation of the matter and questioning of the infiltrator will be conducted later.
The mass exodus of the Kashmiri Pandit community changed the very cultural ethos of Kashmir and there has been little turnback despite three decades having gone by since it got triggered by growing fundamentalism fuelled from across the border, Supreme Court judge Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said on Monday.
Malik again insisted on his physical appearance in the hearing on the killing of four Indian Air Force personnel in 1990.
'If you post on social media on an issue like power cuts in Tral, the police will come to your home and tell you to remove your social media post.' 'If you don't, then the local police threaten you that they will book you under PSA.' 'This is happening all the time in Kashmir.'
PDP president Mehbooba Mufti has been served a notice to vacate her official bungalow in the high-security Gupkar area in Srinagar.
Seventeen former leaders of the Democratic Azad Party (DAP), including ex-deputy chief minister Tara Chand and ex-Pradesh Congress Committee chief Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed, on Friday returned to the Congress fold and were welcomed back by the party which said they were on a 'leave of two months'.
For the last four years since abrogation of Article 370, Kashmir-based political parties have been struggling to forge an alternate narrative to the one forcibly snatched from them. The BJP is bound to go hammer and tongs at them now that their armoury is reinforced with the Supreme Court judgment, notes Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the veteran commentator on Kashmir affairs.
Saddam, a businessman, is the eldest among the two siblings. He has studied in England. Sofiya Nabi Azad, his sister, has studied journalism.
A special court in Jammu on Wednesday asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to physically produce before it JKLF chief Yasin Malik, who is lodged in Delhi's Tihar Jail, on October 20 in connection with the 1989 kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
The Act deals with automatic disqualification of MPs and state legislators upon being convicted and sentenced for two years or more in a criminal case.
Iltija, 35, moved the Jammu and Kashmir high court in February after her application for a passport was not cleared.
From a Pakistan-trained militant to one of the prominent separatist faces in Kashmir, life has come a full circle for chief of the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Yasin Malik, who was in limelight for varied reasons over the past three decades of turmoil in the erstwhile restive border state.
This was for the second time in the past six years that Hussain, who also worked for an intelligence unit of the Pakistani army, was arrested while trying to infiltrate into this side from across the border.
The Delhi high court on Monday issued a notice to separatist leader Yasin Malik, who is currently serving a life term, on a plea by the National Investigation Agency seeking death penalty for him in a terror funding case.
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