Mufti’s death leaves PDP at a vulnerable space

Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, died on Thursday morning at AIIMS in New Delhi. Reports about his declining health began to pour out since August 2015, but the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a local political front he founded in 1999, maintained that the 79-year-old leader was recovering and looking forward to resume work.

Since Mr. Sayeed could not survive his illness — sepsis, decreased blood count and pneumonia — it’s to be seen whether his daughter, Mehbooba Mufti, will fill in his position.

Mr. Sayeed’s death leaves the PDP at a vulnerable space. The party has exhausted significant time and energy wrestling with its coalition partner BJP over the range of issues — the release of the incarcerated separatist leader Masarat Alam, the revival of the State’s decades old beef law, imposing a tax on chopper rides to Amarnath shrine, and flying the state flag along with the national flag.

But the common perception in the PDP was that with Mr. Sayeed’s political finesse the government would complete its six-year term. After all, he is a politician who’s spent his formative years under the command of Indira Gandhi. If the separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani is the man who says no to New Delhi, Mr. Sayeed is quite the opposite. He’s known to be the Congress party’s little soldier in Kashmir, who single-handedly stood against the towering personality of National Conference leader Sheikh Abdullah and throughout the 1970s challenged his politics of Kashmiri nationalism with the ideological doctrine of the Congress.

Former Union Minister and National Conference Patron, Farooq Abdullah, told The Hindu in early November that Mr. Sayeed has been a “great manipulator.”

“He [Mufti] was always promoted by Indira Gandhi to abuse Sheikh Abdullah. His own utterances were against my father,” he said.

Born on January 12, 1936 in south Kashmir’s Bijbehara town, Mr. Sayeed comes from the clergy family of Jammu and Kashmir called “the peers.” The clan claims to have a lineage which goes back to Prophet Muhammad. In both Mufti-led governments, Mr. Sayeed’s coterie was highly influenced by the peers.

According to local accounts, Mr. Sayeed had shown great interest in politics since his young age. He was a member of student union in his high school. But because of the absence of political mentors, his interest soon drifted toward studying the law. He studied Arabic and law at Aligrah Muslim University and by 1959 he had started practicing the law in his home district, Anantnag.

Within a year, Mr. Sayeed abandoned practicing law and joined the left-leaning party Democratic National Conference, the first opposition party that stood against the National Conference in the state.

But as Jawaharlal Nehru tossed the National Conference leader Sheikh Abdullah into jail in 1953, freezing his political mobility for the next 22 years and bringing in Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad as the Prime Minister of then autonomous Jammu and Kashmir, the DNC soon disintegrated. Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad headed the rival faction of the NC and formed the government. Mr.Sayeed who by then had gained the reputation of being anti-Sheikh Abdullah, joined the new NC.

Since then, Mr. Sayeed changed several sides. He joined the Congress in late 1960s, then moved to V.P. Singh’s Jan Morcha which chose him as Home Minister in 1990. He then rejoined the Congress but left again and founded PDP in 1999. When the 2002 assembly elections were round the corner, Mr. Sayeed worked behind the scenes, projecting his daughter as the party’s leading foot soldier.

Ms. Mufti visited the families of the militants who were gunned down by the security forces. She shed tears with their grieving families. She even met militants to ensure the safety of all the PDP workers, who were campaigning in far off villages where gun-toting militants were a common sight.

In 2002, PDP formed a coalition government with the Congress. For the first three years, the PDP ruled with Mr. Sayeed as the Chief Minister. And for the next three years it was the Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad who had to rule. But in the summer of 2008, when Mr. Azad was about to finish his three-year stint as the Chief Minister, a state-wide agitation broke over the alleged illegal transfer of land to Amarnath shrine. The PDP, which had established its position as a Muslim sympathiser party, snapped the ties with the Congress, pulling down the government.

In March 2015, the PDP found the BJP as a better partner. So far, the move hasn’t helped the party so far since it’s had troubles with the BJP along the religious and political lines.

At present, the people in the valley have conflicted views about Mr. Sayeed. Some remember him as a Chief Minister who governed well between 2002-2005, some remember him as a leader who made a gross miscalculation in the end by joining hands with the BJP.

“It is Mufti sahib who formed a space for the people who were disillusioned with the NC and the separatists and it is Mufti sahib who eroded that space,” a senior PDP leader told The Hindu.

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