Veteran Jammu and Kashmir Communist chief and CPI(M) central committee member Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami once more emerged because the victor within the Kulgam Meeting seat in South Kashmir, defeating the banned outfit Jamaat-e-Islami-backed Impartial candidate Sayar Ahmad Reshi.
A stronghold of the Jamaat, the Kulgam constituency has most popular “pink” over “inexperienced”, at the very least in electoral politics, electing Tarigami, 75, for 5 consecutive phrases from 1996 to 2024. He has been the lone Left legislator in Kashmir for a few years.
Behind Tarigami’s lengthy streak of wins are his development-oriented politics, help from the Nationwide Convention (NC) and the absence of the Jamaat, his primary rival, from the electoral scene because the early Nineties. The Left-Jamaat rivalry in Kulgam is as previous as Tarigami’s electoral profession.
Within the Nineteen Sixties, the political ideology of Tarigami, then a university pupil, was influenced by the socialist views of Abdul Kabir Wani, a Communist chief from Chawalgam in Kulgam. Tarigami lived only a few kilometres away in Tarigam, the village that gave him his final title.
Impressed by Wani and Ram Piara Saraf and Krishen Dev Sethi, socialists and members of the J&Ok Constituent Meeting, Tarigami joined the Revolutionary College students and Youth Federation in 1967 as a university pupil. The rising reputation of socialist beliefs alerted the Jamaat, a non secular outfit with a powerful base within the neighbouring Shopian. Two of the Jamaat’s influential founding members, Ghulam Ahmad Ahrar and Hakim Ghulam Nabi, have been from Shopian.
The Jamaat began engaged on the bottom. It was then that Sheikh Ghulam Hassan, a fellow villager in Tarigam who later rose to turn out to be the Ameer-e-Jamaat (Jamaat chief) for 2 phrases, resigned from his authorities job to give attention to spreading the Jamaat ideology in Kulgam.
Round this time, the socialist leaders who influenced Tarigami switched sides to undertake Naxalite ideology. Tarigami and others adopted, went underground and have been arrested in 1970 underneath the Preventive Detention Act. Whereas they have been in jail, the Jamaat efficiently labored on the bottom and slowly turned its “pink” villages into “inexperienced”. In 1972, the Jamaat confirmed its presence in Kulgam when its candidate Abdul Razak Mir was elected to the state Meeting. The neighbouring Homshalibugh (then often known as the Nandi constituency) was additionally received by the Jamaat’s Ali Mohammad Dar.
Tarigami jumped into the Kulgam electoral fray in 1983 however stood fourth behind the NC, Jamaat and Congress. Within the 1987 Meeting elections, believed to have been massively rigged in favour of the NC-Congress alliance that led to insurgency within the Valley, the Jamaat wrested the seat from the NC whereas Tarigami stood third.
As militancy took root, the Jamaat legislators, elected as Independents, resigned from the Meeting and the Jamaat determined to keep away from polls. This gave Tarigami a possibility to realize a foothold in Kulgam.
Within the 1996 Meeting elections, the primary since militancy started and after six years of President’s Rule, he contested his third consecutive polls. The NC, then the one viable political power in Kashmir, didn’t discipline a candidate towards him, and Tarigami received the seat for the primary time. His nearest rivals have been from the Janata Dal and the J&Ok Awami League, a political social gathering shaped by counter-insurgents led by Kuka Parray.
Three years after the Tarigami’s first win, Kashmir’s political panorama witnessed one other change — the formation of the Peoples Democratic Occasion (PDP) by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Inside three years, the social gathering seen as a viable different to the NC, gained a foothold in South Kashmir.
Within the 2002 Meeting polls, Tarigami was up towards not simply the NC but additionally the PDP. For the reason that Jamaat and their supporters had stayed away from elections, the anti-Tarigami vote break up between the NC and PDP, and Tarigami sailed by simply.
By 2008, the Jamaat sympathisers had a rethink of their boycott, particularly in South Kashmir. Whereas their cadres principally refrained from polls, a lot of their supporters rallied behind the PDP. This modified the equation for Tarigami. Although he scraped by within the 2008 and 2014 elections, by margins of 336 and 334 votes respectively, he was being strongly challenged on his turf.
After 37 years, within the present J&Ok elections, a faction of the Jamaat had a change of coronary heart and determined to take part within the democratic train. Whereas its entry didn’t generate a lot curiosity within the Valley, in Kulgam, the previous rivalry got here to the fore as soon as once more. Because the marketing campaign began, Jamaat’s candidate Reshi focused Tarigami’s socialist ideology saying it’s towards the rules of Islam, which may have been a rallying level towards the Left chief. However by now, Tarigami has established himself in Kulgam not solely as a Communist face, but additionally as a political chief whose single-point focus is on growth and the day-to-day problems with the individuals.
The residents of the villages in Kulgam swear by his growth work, particularly the black-topped roads that snake by far-off villages, orchards and paddy fields.
Whereas Tarigami’s manifesto has all the time been centred on growth, in his marketing campaign for this election, he additionally talked about id, Article 370, alleged “anti-Muslim” insurance policies of the Narendra Modi authorities and the bigger Kashmir challenge. The Jamaat candidates did not counter him.
A celebration that was on the forefront of militancy for 3 many years didn’t discuss concerning the Kashmir challenge, Article 370 or human rights. There was anger inside its cadre and whereas a few of them didn’t vote, some others supported Tarigami, who was additionally backed by the NC-Congress mix. And this time, he didn’t squeeze by by a couple of hundred votes, however clinched his Kulgam bastion by over 7,800 votes.
