Elections talks are already warming the air from Karnataka to Kashmir, from Bengal to Rajasthan. The parties are busy strengthening old alliances and working at forging new ones. The battle may as yet be some distance away but the drums are rolling, the flags flaunted. The Jammu and Kashmir, a State that, unlike others in the Union, enjoys a six-year term, a year more than any other State Assembly. The former Musharraf regime and the Indian Government have opened up new avenues as a lead-up to reconciliation between the two nations. A number of confidence measures are already in place and the door for further talks is still very open.

The valley appears to have developed a vested interest in the development process set in motion by the Government. The way forward, they seem to have realized, lies in finding solutions that move away from territoriality towards assured political and economic returns hoping that it will make them stakeholders in the nation-building and state-making process. Towards this end a strong emphasis had in the past been laid on the role of third parties as instruments of change. Some bold steps by New Delhi and Islamabad directly have set the ball of reconciliation in motion. All this may not appear to be the ideal way of looking at the possible election scene in the State but these are some hard positions which nevertheless do provide the backdrop to the process whenever it actually gets going. Given the valley-centric focus of all matters concerning the State of Jammu and Kashmir one must start by saying that the stakes are indeed very high for the two known major contestants, with the Congress Party.

The National Conference being the oldest of the State’s political parties, tracing it origin to the late 1930s, and incidentally the largest single party in the present assembly as well, has a lot of toil ahead of it. With Omar Abdullah still living in the shadow of his father, Dr Farooq Abdullah, the father-son twosome has its work cut out for it. Its moribund cadres will need strong motivation to revive its contact with the masses. Another plus for the PDP is the feeling among ordinary Kashmiris that Mufti, during his years as the Chief Minister, had done well by them.
The comatose Congress Party in the valley, which continues to be part of the coalition, which it now heads with Ghulam Nabi Azad at the helm, has not been able to en cash on any of Mufti government’s pluses.

The Congress Party can hope to fare better in the Jammu province where its main rival will be the BJP and, of course, the NC which has always had some following there. The Mayawati factor would marginally affect the outcome in the Jammu region which has its share of Dalits and other backwards. The real test for the mainstream parties could yet come up in the shape of separatist backed Independents should they choose to contest Jammat-e-lslami, the only cadre-based separatist grouping in the valley is said to have distanced itself from the poll boycott announced by separatist groups. The mainstream parties will indeed have to reposition their agendas given the new realities of the Indo-Pak scenario and day-to-day concerns of the people in the valley.