New faces of J&Okay’s new politics

The latest DDC polls, the primary democratic train in J&Okay because the Centre’s August 5 transfer, has seen the redrawing of political strains and the emergence of a brand new management — from a regulation scholar in North Kashmir to a dentist within the South, a faculty instructor in Jammu to the spouse of a seasoned politician in Kashmir. The Indian Express in Jammu inform a few of their tales.
Shabir Ahmad Lone, 45, PAGD (NC)Rohama, Baramulla
A National Conference employee since 1999, Lone was among the many mainstream politicians arrested and booked underneath the Public Safety Act within the aftermath of the constitutional adjustments to J&Okay. He spent six months in Srinagar Central Jail, earlier than the UT administration quashed his detention.
“This win is an opportunity to strengthen the PAGD’s position so that we can take on the challenge of restoring J&K’s special status,” he mentioned.
Lone defeated J&Okay Apni Party candidate Zahoor Ahmad Mir, who too was booked underneath PSA, by over 1,500 votes.FIRST ON HIS LIST: “The last time these roads were paved was in 2014. That will be my first priority.”
IRFAN HAFEEZ LONE, 40, IndependentSangrama, North Kashmir
In the winter of 2007, Irfan Hafeez Lone, then a regulation scholar at Kashmir University, staged a sit-in at Jantar Mantar to hunt compensation for the losses suffered by J&Okay underneath the Indus Water Treaty, marking the start of his political activism. Thirteen years and two unsuccessful electoral makes an attempt later, he lastly managed to defeat a former legislator, Shoaib Nabi Lone, who was combating on a J&Okay Apni Party ticket.
IRFAN HAFEEZ LONE
An everyday panellist on nationwide tv, Lone’s first brush with public life started early when, as a baby, he would accompany his father Hafizullah Lone, a distinguished activist, to conferences and rallies. In 1991, on the peak of Kashmir’s days of militancy, when Lone was barely 12 years outdated, his father was gunned down by unidentified folks at his village Wagub.
While in school, Lone would use Right to Information to ask questions of the federal government. He has additionally campaigned for trade standing to Kashmir’s apple enterprise.
In 2008, after his commencement, Lone unsuccessfully contested the 2008 and 2014 Assembly elections from Sangrama.
“The goodwill my family has earned and my own work on the ground have paid off,” he says. “Now it is my turn to fight for the people, for their political rights, for the special status. I have many differences with the NC and PDP but on the Gupkar declaration, we are on the same page”.
Lone hopes his victory will encourage others. “Activists usually fail in electoral politics — be is Yogendra Yadav, Medha Patkar or Irom Sharmila. But my win as an Independent candidate should encourage many others.”
FIRST ON HIS LIST: Widening of the Srinagar-Baramulla freeway. “It has become a death trap,” he says.
SAFEENA BAIG, 47, IndependentWagoora, North Kashmir
In 2018, Safeena Baig was appointed president of the PDP’s girls’s wing. Behind her sudden emergence had been her years of political expertise as a backstage supervisor for her husband Muzaffar Hussain Baig, a founding member and patron of the PDP who resigned from the occasion days earlier than the DDC polls.
While Baig accused the occasion of not consulting him earlier than leaders of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) finalised the seat-sharing deal, many imagine he was not completely satisfied because the seat Safeena needed to contest went to the National Conference. But Safeena denies this.
“Members of the civil society came to Baig sahib and said we should contest from there. Baig sahib had made a commitment to them and that was why I contested the polls,” she says.
SAFEENA BAIG
A lawyer, Safeena graduated from Aligarh Muslim University. But being
the spouse of a politician, it was onerous to flee politics.
Wagoora noticed a troublesome triangular contest between Safeena, PAGD candidate Shaheena Begum and Apni Party’s Nasreena Firdous (mom of former legislator Shoiab Lone).
But when the outcomes had been declared, Safeena had secured a cushty lead over the PAGD candidate by 1,491 votes.
While she has not formally give up the PDP, she says, “My politics is linked to Baig sahib. Any decision on my future would be also linked to him.”
FIRST ON HER LIST: The constituency has a number of far-off areas and he or she hopes to begin enhancing highway connectivity.
Minha Lateef, BJP, 22Kakapora II, Pulwama
The 22-year-old contested and gained the Kakapora II territorial constituency, giving the BJP a uncommon win in South Kashmir. A 3rd-year regulation scholar, she is eager to complete her commencement whereas additionally guaranteeing that the essential developmental calls for of her constituency are met. “I wanted to make sure I have a background that can support my career in public service,” she says.
Minha Lateef
Her father, Lateef Bhat, is a BJP Pradesh unit functionary. With Kakapora one of many seats reserved for ladies, Bhat urged his daughter to contest. Mihna secured a 14-vote lead, defeating her closest opponent, PDP’s Ruqaya Bano.
FIRST ON HER LIST: Metalled roads for her village, Kakapora
HARBAKSH SINGH, 41, PDPTral, South Kashmir
A social employee and a certified dentist, Dr Singh was elected as a DDC member from Tral, a separatist stronghold in South Kashmir’s Pulwama.
In reality, the largely Muslim voters of Tral had voted in two Sikh candidates to the Pulwama DDC. “Kashmiriyat is all about communal harmony,” says Singh.
Son of a faculty instructor, Singh joined the Government Dental College in Srinagar for his commencement. It was right here that he had his first brush with scholar politics. After being related to the Congress’s scholar outfit, the National Students Union of India, Singh quickly turned state common secretary of the Youth Congress.
In 2011, Singh joined PDP as common secretary of the occasion’s youth wing. “I switched to a regional party because you had access to the leadership — you could meet Mehboobaji whenever you wanted,” he says.

ExplainedSpace for democracyElections to the 20 DDCs throughout Jammu & Kashmir has seen 278 members, chopping throughout occasion strains, emerge victorious within the first democratic train because the Centre stripped the previous state of its particular standing and downgraded it into two Union Territories. The proven fact that many of the DDC members are political debutants is an indication that J&Okay’s democratic house continues to be intact.

Singh hopes the DDC win will assist him serve folks higher. “Earlier, when people came to me with their problems, I would try and help them, but having to deal with the bureaucracy was frustrating,” he says. “But now that people have voted me to the DDC, I will fight for them.”
FIRST ON HIS LIST: Removing “commission culture”. Also, higher electrical energy and secure ingesting water for villages in his constituency.
Peer Shahbaz Ahmad, 31, IndependentVerinag, Anantnag
A former sarpanch from Kapran and a former block president of the Congress, Shahbaz says it’s the work he did as chairman of the Block Development Council over the past two years that propelled him to a win within the District Council. However, his choice to contest meant he needed to go towards his occasion.
Ahmad says although he had been a floor employee of the Congress for lengthy, “yet, the party gave the ticket to a candidate who has never worked on the ground here”.
Peer Shahbaz Ahmad
Ahmad finally defeated Pradesh Congress chief G A Mir’s son, Naseer Ahmad Mir, who fell brief by 630 votes.
“I have worked for the development of the area over the last couple of years and people do see that,” Ahmad added.
FIRST ON HIS LIST: “About 80,000 people of the area depend on a single branch of the J&K Bank in Anantnag. I hope to get a branch of the bank closer to the village.”
Shazia Kouser, 33, IndependentBudhal Old A, Rajouri
Kouser resigned from her job as a authorities faculty instructor in Jammu metropolis’s Sunjwan space to contest the DDC polls. She defeated the NC’s Shaheen Akhtar by a margin of two,446 votes, relegating her aunt and spouse of former minister Zulfikar Choudhary (J&Okay Apni Party), Zubeda Begum, to 3rd place.
“People reached out to my husband Javed Iqbal, who is chairman of Budhal Old Block Development Council, to field someone from the family after the DDC constituency was reserved for women… For me, this is an opportunity to serve people living in these tough terrains. I have made it clear to my husband that I will not sit at home and allow male members of the family to work in my place,” says Kouser who holds a Masters’ in microbiology.
Shazia Kouser
Ensuring kids of her constituency get to varsities is amongst her priorities. “The government scheme of having a primary school every 3 km and a middle school every 8 km exists only on paper. Even today, there are children in the constituency who have never been to schools,” says Kouser, who has shifted her daughter, a Class 2 scholar, from a faculty in Jammu metropolis to at least one in Rajouri to make sure that she is on the market to her constituents always.
FIRST ON HER LIST: Kouser says her first focus might be to make sure highway connectivity. “There are villages where people trek for nearly three to four hours to get to the nearest motorable roads,” she says.
Asim Qureshi, 45, National ConferenceGundna, Doda
The advocate defeated former minister and vice-president of BJP’s J&Okay unit Shakti Raj Parihar. Qureshi says he’ll give attention to improvement and promote communal concord.
“Villages don’t have road connectivity… The constituency has 15 panchayats under it and only two dispensaries… Schools don’t have adequate teaching staff,” he says.
Asim Qureshi
However, provides Qureshi, the success of his plans will depend upon “how the government behaves”. “Let’s see if they permit the DDCs to work and allocate funds to it. People should not completely satisfied over the best way issues occurred on August 5, 2019 (when Article 370 was revoked),’’ he says.
FIRST ON HIS LIST: Qureshi desires to deliver highway connectivity to his constituency
Dr Manohar Singh, 68, PDPNowshera, Rajouri
A doctor, Singh polled 10,579 votes and gained the Nowshera constituency, a BJP bastion and native place of J&Okay BJP president and former MLA Ravinder Raina. His win on a PDP ticket assumes significance in gentle of the BJP’s intensive marketing campaign within the area, together with visits by Union Ministers.
“There had been no development in Nowshera despite it being a border area. People living along the LoC face Pakistani shelling every day. They get injured, even killed, and their houses are damaged, but nobody cares for them,” says Singh, who retired from authorities service eight years in the past and now has his personal medication follow in Nowshera city.
“In the 2014 Assembly elections, the present BJP president Ravinder Raina got elected due to the Modi wave, but he did not visit the people here after that,” he provides.
Singh says he was positive of profitable as a result of there was already quite a lot of discontentment amongst folks and “no BJP wave in the constituency”.
FIRST ON HIS LIST: As a DDC member, he says, my position might be to make sure energy provide, higher healthcare, and extra security measures within the constituency.
Kumari Shaveta, 30, BJPKeerian Gandyal, Kathua
A homeopathY practitioner, she defeated former MLA and Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan Party candidate Kanta Andotra by a margin of 1,675 votes.
“I hail from Jagatpur village. It is only one km away from the highway at Lakhanpur, but there is no road connectivity. Last year, when I got married and moved out, I also had to walk to get anywhere… That’s when I decided to contest the polls,” she says.
Shaveta believes the DDC polls will spotlight problems with rural areas and likewise assist bridge the hole between Jammu and Kashmir. “The two divisions have always accused each other of taking away the major share of development funds. Now that both have an equal number of DDC constituencies, there will be real change on the ground,” she provides.
FIRST ON HER LIST: Shaveta says whereas campaigning she discovered that there have been only a few authorities dispensaries in her space. Ensuring higher healthcare might be her precedence.