Low turnout: A learning lesson for mainstream parties

The poor turnout shows the alienation of former MLAs with the people at grass roots. The parliamentarians and legislators who were elected on 70% turn out in 2014 parliamentary and assembly elections betrayed the electorate on all fronts. Parliamentarians and legislators elected from Kashmir sought votes from the people against the rise of BJP in the only muslim majority state of the country but majority of them belonging to PDP endorsed the highly objectionable and controversial decision of late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed to ally with the BJP a party which has been propagating abrogation of article 370 guaranteeing special status to Jammu & Kashmir state and scraping article 35 A governing the hereditary state subject law on residency rights of the people of Jammu & Kashmir. The PDP legislators not only endorsed the alliance of their party with the BJP but also endorsed the controversial decisions on extension of exgratia relief and government jobs to the victims of 2008 Amarnarth land row agitation in Jammu along with the victims of 2016 unrest in Kashmir valley, the implementation of Goods & Services Tax (GST) and also rolled backed its position on the release of political detunes in Kashmir to satisfy the political egos of the top brass of BJP and RSS. The PDP legislators did not cry even against the use of pellets which killed about one hundred civilians in Kashmir and blinded thousands across valley. Ironically the PDP legislators even allowed the practice of yoga in schools even after UP Chief Minister Yogi Andityanath one among the BJP’s top proponents for changing India into “hindu rashtra” said “there is similarity in postures between Namaz and Namaskar”.
So from religion to politics and governance to release of political prisoners, the PDP legislators hurted and humiliated Kashmiris and youth in Kashmiri responded the brute surrender of PDP legislators before the RSS remote controlled BJP by violent protests against the policemen and the paramilitaries who at the behest of their political bosses caged separatist leaders who for Kashmiris are the symbols of decades olds resistance struggle in Kashmir. Low turn out is the response to the betrayals of not only PDP but of other mainstream parties primarily National Conference and Congress which are equally responsible for eroding the special status of the state through extension of dozens of central laws to Jammu & Kashmir without the consent and approval of the state assembly. Had the PDP legislators shown even little bit of respect to the popular mandate they got only and only to keep BJP out of power, neither the PDP patron late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed would have mustered the courage to ally with the BJP nor the PDP President Mehbooba Mufti would have dared to revive the alliance with the saffron party after the death of her father. While the PDP legislators have been punished for endorsing an unholy alliance, the morale of other non BJP parties has also gone down to the lowest levels in the post 1947history of the electoral politics of the state and they need to draw lesson from the experiences of this round of electoral contest. The low turn out in the parliamentary elections by all standards of understandabilities is befitting response to the betrayals of mainstream parties and it is the right time for them to learn lesson from the unprecedented boycott of the ongoing parliamentary elections.