Age debate: Inheritance of loss

Mufti Muhammad Sayeed was Jammu and Kashmir’s third chief minister to pass away while in office. He is likely to be succeeded by his daughter and president of People’s Democratic Party Mehbooba Mufti as the first woman chief minister of the sensitive and conflict-ridden state.

Daughter of a wily politician, Ms Mufti didn’t have much of political exposure till late 1990s. Her personal life has also not been as pleasant as one would want. Married in 1984, she got divorced after giving birth to two daughters. There is, however, an interesting story connected with her date of marriage, i.e. July 5, 1984.

Many Kashmir watchers believe that her scheming father Mufti Sayeed chose this date carefully to advance his own political agenda by hoodwinking Farooq Abdullah, the then chief minister of state. After planning and engineering defections in National Conference (NC), Mufti got Mr Abdullah overthrown with the help of sent-for-specific-task governor Jagmohan on July 2, 1984. In fact, what misled

Mr Abdullah and his close aides to ignore the rumours of his impeding dismissal was that Mufti distributed the invitation cards of Ms Mufti’s wedding saying that he would like to see his daughter’s marriage ceremony pass uninterrupted at least for the customary seven days.

When the idea of the PDP was floated by Indian strategists in 1996, to beat hard separatism with a softer version, it was

Ms Mufti who gave the idea a shape on ground. She would visit every house, including those of militants who had suffered at the hands of security forces and the then infamous Special Operations Group (SOG) or Task Force of the J&K Police. Soon the PDP became a force to reckon with and a political alternative to the NC. In 2002, it wrested 16 seats and formed a government after cobbling up a coalition with the Congress. In 2008, following the Amarnath land row, it withdrew support to its coalition partner, leading to the downfall of Ghulam Nabi Azad-led government. According to inner PDP circles, the decision to withdraw support was taken by Ms Mufti without the concurrence of her father who was out of station at that particular time. Privately, the Mufti did express his displeasure over the impromptu decision of Ms Mufti.

Now, with her father’s sad demise, Ms Mufti’s ascent is a foregone conclusion. There will, of course, be initial hiccups like its coalition partner Bharatiya Janata Party’s attempts to extract its pound of flesh in an atmosphere of growing polarisation between the state’s two principal divisions — J&K Valley following the beef ban controversy and more recently the unnecessary state flag row.

A major challenge for Ms Mufti will be to tackle the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-backed BJP government at the Centre which is more inclined towards Jammu than Srinagar for obvious reasons, be it fund allocation, commissioning of technical institutions or medical institutes. These issues will make her job difficult as they require a tremendous amount of political sagacity and administrative experience which she, unfortunately, lacks.

Another problem which she will face is dissension within her own party. It is a well-known fact that two PDP MPs — Muzaffar Hussain Baig and Tariq Hameed Karra — were not happy with Mufti’s choice of new faces introduced just before the elections and subsequently made ministers. Ms Mufti doesn’t possess the stature and guile of her father to resolve these inner issues and that means her sailing will not be smooth.

Abdul Majid Zargar is a political analyst and columnist

$ She lacks political sagacity

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Mufti Muhammad Sayeed’s death in harness has, expectedly, created a political vacuum at the top and plunged the creaky People’s Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition into agonising suspense, more than any serious uncertainty fuelled by the speculative media.

That much was bound to happen for Mufti’s stature overshadowed the PDP’s as much as it did its tenuous alliance with the ideological incompatible BJP. Although Mufti’s daughter, Mehbooba Mufti, is expectedly poised to succeed her father, she can hardly replace him, at least not in the near future. In fact, if and when the PDP-BJP coalition is reborn under Ms Mufti’s untried leadership, it would also have to be steered in the uncharted waters of Kashmir’s murky politics.

Mufti was known for his effective, strong leadership in both the spheres of politics and administration. Having come up the hard way and proved himself as a great source of motivation on both fronts, he inspired instant allegiance across the board.

Ms Mufti has a track record of her own: as an organisational leader. She, in fact, pioneered the PDP’s stunning emergence on Kashmir’s political scene at a time when the ground was bristling with the after-effects of armed insurgency. She surprised friends and foes with her grit and endurance. These qualities were not associated with her till then. It might as well be true that she was a reluctant entrant, but no more. She has proved herself in whatever role was assigned to her so far.

Even so, the generational changeover of leadership carries its own unforeseen implications, going by the nearest parallel of the contemporary generations of the Abdullah dynasty. Changeover from an incomparable patriarch, Sheikh Abdullah to Farooq Abdullah and then to Omar Abdullah was accompanied by a gradual decline of the National Conference’s political fortunes. From possessing two-thirds legislative majority, the NC under the two “cubs” of Sher-e-Kashmir today looks like a political skeleton with a measly 15 MLAs in the 87-member state Assembly.

Ms Mufti in this period spearheaded the PDP from nowhere to top of the ladder, showing gradual upward growth in its popular acceptability.

However, a major difference between the two cases is that while the family successors in the Abdullah dynasty had practically little or no ground experience,

Ms Mufti has virtually risen from the grassroots on her own steam and established a direct rapport with her party cadres and supporters. Her acumen in power is yet to be tested, though. She will be watched for her temperament while occupying the top seat in the none-too-pleasant looking coalition. Mufti exuded self-confidence in tackling the adverse fallouts of crossing ideological the redline and embracing, of all the parties, the BJP in India’s only Muslim majority state troubled by perpetual tensions of all kind — regional, ethnic, communal and of being a hot border state. Ms Mufti would need all the good luck to at least do as much as her far-more-experienced father was able to do in walking this too tight a rope. So-called fringe elements in the saffron parivar have not been a help to her father. Will they behave differently now

The answer to this question will considerably influence the course of events in the days to come.

Mohammad Sayeed Malik is a veteran journalist and former executive editor of the Sunday Observer

$ Mehbooba has proved herself

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