Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly election, 1987

Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly election, 1987

23 March 1987
all 76 seats in Legislative Assembly 39 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	74.9%
First party Second party Third party   Leader Farooq Abdullah Party JKN INC MUF Last election 46 26 0 Seats won 40 26 4 Seat change 6 4   Fourth party Fifth party   Party BJP Independents Last election 0 4 Seats won 2 4 Seat change 2
Chief Minister before election Farooq Abdullah JKN Elected Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah JKN

Elections for the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir were held on 23 March 1987. Farooq Abdullah was reappointed as the Chief Minister.^[1]

The election is widely said to have been rigged.^[2][3][4] This led to Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir post that elections and Exodus of lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits.^[5] Later, Indian general election, 1989 saw less than 10 percent voting in Kashmir valley. According to official figures, the polling stood at marginal 5 percent in Srinagar and Anantnag Lok Sabha segments.^[6] Thereafter, President rule was imposed in Jammu and Kashmir from 1990 to 1996.^[7] 1987 election in a way was a watershed in the politics of the Jammu and Kashmir state.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Background

Four months after the assumption of power by Dr. Farooq Abdullah, fresh elections were held for the State Assembly on 23 March 1987 which were contested by the Congress-I and the NC, in coalition. Before the elections, various anti-establishment groups including Jamaat-e-Islami joined hands to form a Muslim United Front (MUF) mainly pointing out that the NC had capitulated before the Centre for the sake of power and bartered away the special status of the State. Efforts were made to arouse Muslim sentiments along communal lines. MUF's election manifesto stressed the need for a solution to all outstanding issues according to Simla Agreement, work for Islamic unity and against political interference from the centre. Their slogan was wanting the law of the Quran in the Assembly.^[12]

The NC-Congress(I) combine contested all the 76 seats and the MUF, 43 seats.^[13][1]

Voting

The election were held on 23 March 1987. Nearly 75 percent of the voters participated, highest recorded participation in the state. Nearly eighty per cent of the people in the Valley voted.^[14][15]

Elections for Bhadrawah, Leh and Kargil were held in June 1987.^[16]

Electoral malpractices

The India Today reported that ″starting about two weeks before the election, 600 opposition workers were arrested in areas where the MUF, independents, and PC candidates were showing strength″.^[17]

In the Amira Kadal constituency of Srinagar, MUF's Syed Mohammed Yusuf Shah was a candidate. As the vote counting began, it was becoming clear that Yusuf Shah was winning by a landslide. His opponent, Ghulam Mohiuddin Shah, went home dejected. But he was summoned back by the electoral officials and declared the winner. When the crowds protested, the police arrived and arrested Yusuf Shah and his supporters. They were held in custody till the end of 1987.^[18]

Leader of the People's Conference, Abdul Ghani Lone, complained that vote counting in the constituency of Handwara was tampered with by the deputy inspector-general of police, A.M. Watali. There were several cases like this with other candidates but the petitions to the courts did not lead to any action. There was no response from the central government, courts or the election commission to the demands that the allegations of rigging be investigated. Kashmir's High Court chose not to probe the allegations and the Election Commission was inactive at the time.^[17]

Balraj Puri has noted three constituencies where the MUF lost narrowly: Bijbehara, Wachi and Shopian. The number of rejected votes in these constituencies was far higher than the margin of victory for the alliance, indicating that the vote counting could have been easily manipulated.^[19]

Vote counting in seats where the MUF held influence took longer than the three hours of vote counting in Farooq Abdullah's seat. In the vital district of Anantnag it was reported that the results were delayed for 2 and a half days while the polling station was surrounded by hundreds of policemen. In Bijbehara the polling officers simply refused to count on when they found that a MUF candidate had taken an early lead. An NC candidate with a lead of 300 votes was declared the winner in Doru even though more than a thousand votes remained to be counted. Counting in the Pulwama constituency took no account of the strategic Tahab belt. Counting in Shopian and Sopore went on for three days until MUF candidates were declared the losers.^[20]

BBC reported that Khem Lata Wukhloo, who was a leader of the Congress party at the time, admitted the widespread rigging in Kashmir. He stated:

"I remember that there was a massive rigging in 1987 elections. The losing candidates were declared winners. It shook the ordinary people's faith in the elections and the democratic process."^[21]

Governor Jagmohan is reported to have been appalled at what was being done, but he said that he was ordered by the central government in Delhi not to interfere.^[20]

Many see this rigged election as a cause of militancy in Kashmir.^[22] Abdul Ghani Lone became a separatist leader after the 1987 election and stated that many young people, out of frustration with the democratic process, decided to go for an armed struggle.^[17]

Extent of electoral malpractice

The extent of election malpractice has been debated.

Scholar Victoria Schofield has stated that the MUF might have won four more seats if there was no electoral fraud.^[23] On the other hand, an anonymous source in the Intelligence Bureau has advanced the estimate that the MUF may have lost approximately 13 seats due to electoral malpractice.^[24] Other journalists and commentators have estimated a loss of fifteen to twenty seats.^[4] Farooq Abdullah himself has admitted that MUF might have been able to win 20 seats in the absence of rigging.^[25] Scholar Sumantra Bose, on the other hand, believes that the MUF would have won most of the constituencies in the Kashmir Valley. The basis for this estimate appears to be that, since the MUF won a third of the officially declared vote statewide, its vote share in the Valley would have been far higher.^[26] However, the official vote count does establish that the MUF polled 31.9% of the votes cast in the Valley.^{[27][note 1]}

Results

The NC-Congress alliance won 66 seats in the Assembly: NC winning 40 seats of the 45 it contested, and Congress winning 26 out of 31 (5 out of 6 contested seats in the Valley).^[29][14] The alliance received only 53% of the popular vote but garnered 87% of the seats.^[30]

The BJP won 2 seats, in Jammu.^[15][31] The MUF hoped to win 10 seats out of the 44 seats it contested. But it won only 4 seats, even though it had polled 31% votes.^[15] The MUF gained a 'huge' number of votes of 470580 in spite of the rigging.^[32] Syed Ali Shah Geelani was able to win the election from his Sopore seat.^[33]

The disparity between the popular vote and the seat wins was very high. (In comparison, in 1983, the NC and Congress garnered 95% of the seats on the strength 78% of the vote).^[30]

Journalist Balraj Puri states that the MUF emerged as the main alternative to the NC-Congress alliance in all parts of the Valley, except the four constituencies of the Kupwara district where Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference came in the second place.^[19] Even though the People's Conference did not win a seat despite having been expected to do well in the constituencies of Bandipora, Sangrama, Handwara, and Kupwara they still managed to capture 93949 votes.^[20]

Aftermath

Farooq Abdullah was elected Chief Minister and formed a coalition government. However, the Government lacked legitimacy in the eyes of the people in the Valley. Rebels stamped the election as a "thoroughly made one".^[34] The Valley sank into a "morass of frustration and radicalization", states scholar Sumantra Bose. In June 1988, there were protests against a hike in the electricity tariffs, resulting in police firings. In July, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front launched its first bomb attack in Srinagar.^[35] A cycle of violence and protests took hold, steadily rising in tempo. In January 1990, the Farooq Abdullah government was dismissed and Governor's Rule was declared.

See also

• Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir
• Ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus
• Kashmir conflict

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Bose, Sumantra (2003), Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-01173-2
• Bose, Sumantra (2013), Transforming India, Harvard University Press, ISBN 9780674728196
• Das Gupta, J. B. (2002), Islamic Fundamentalism and India, Gurgaon: Hope India Publications (for Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies), ISBN 978-1-61820-159-1
• Grover, Verinder; Arora, Ranjana, eds. (1996). Encyclopaedia of India and Her States: Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab. Deep & Deep. ISBN 978-81-7100-723-3.
• Guha, Ramachandra (2008), India after Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, Pan Macmillian, ISBN 0330396110
• Puri, Balraj (30 May 1987), "Fundamentalism in Kashmir, Fragmentation in Jammu", Economic and Political Weekly, 22 (22): 835–837, JSTOR 4377036
• Schofield, Victoria (2003) [First published in 2000], Kashmir in Conflict, London and New York: I. B. Taurus & Co, ISBN 1860648983
• Widmalm, Sten (November 1997), "The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Jammu and Kashmir", Asian Survey, 37 (11): 1005–1030, JSTOR 2645738
• Widmalm, Sten (2002), Kashmir in Comparative Perspective: Democracy and Violent Separatism in India, Psychology Press, ISBN 978-0-7007-1578-7