Congress ‘entirely reliant’ on NC for survival in JK, says MLA Nizamuddin Bhat

Jammu: For a political party that once ruled Jammu and Kashmir with a semblance of authority, the Congress now finds itself in an unenviable position too weak to stand alone, too marginalised to matter within its own alliance, and too weighed down by history to mount a credible revival.

On the sidelines of the ongoing budget session here, Bandipora MLA Nizamuddin Bhat, in an interview with News Agency Kashmir News Service, offered a diagnosis of the Congress’s decline that was remarkable for its candour. Tracing the party’s electoral graph over the decades, he painted a picture of unremitting free fall. “The vote bank that you pulled out of your hands… if you were at 28, 20, or 16, today you have stopped at 2 or 4,” he said, referring to the party’s shrinking tally in the Assembly.

The reasons, according to Bhat, are threefold: the BJP’s polarising politics, the Congress’s own leadership failures, and — most pointedly — being politically “overpowered” by its alliance partner, the National Conference.

“Whether it is the politics of Hindu-Muslim, whether it is the shortcomings in the leadership of Congress, or the National Conference has completely overpowered you,” Bhat said.

The admission is significant, coming from a sitting MLA, because it publicly articulates what has long been whispered in the Congress ranks that the party has been reduced to a junior partner so junior that it is virtually a spectator in the government it props up from outside.

The alliance trap

The irony is layered. The Congress entered into a pre-poll pact with the NC for the 2024 Assembly elections, ceding space in Kashmir in the hope of consolidating its presence in Jammu. The calculation was straightforward the NC would dominate the valley, the Congress would hold its own in the hills. It didn’t work out that way.

The NC swept the valley, the Congress failed to win a single seat in Jammu, and the regional outfit formed a government without needing its ally’s legislative support. The Congress now extends outside support — a euphemism for irrelevance .

Recent weeks have laid bare the tension. When the NC convened a joint legislative party meeting at Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s residence on February 2, the Congress sent only Bhat. The party’s legislature leader, Ghulam Ahmad Mir and J&K president Tariq Hameed Karra stayed away — a conspicuous snub.

Bhat conveyed that what the boycott signalled the Congress was “not happy with the post-poll arrangements” and felt excluded from decision-making. The promised coordination committee between the two parties was never formed. On key issues — reservations, administrative reforms, statehood — the NC government moved unilaterally.

“There was no coordination even during the Rajya Sabha polls and on the strategy with the Centre,” Bhat said.

The NC’s response, delivered at the February 2 meeting, was a masterclass in political one-upmanship. According to sources, party president Farooq Abdullah reminded the Congress that the NC had offered it all Assembly seats in the Jammu region during the 2024 elections — seats the Congress failed to win. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah defended his government’s approach, arguing that maintaining functional relations with the Centre could not be held hostage to political disagreements.

The message was unmistakable: you bring nothing to the table, so don’t expect a seat at it.

Bhat himself acknowledged the new reality with unsparing honesty. “Congress cannot run without the National Conference,” he admitted.

Yet, in the same breath, he defended the alliance as a political “imperative” against the BJP — a contradiction that captures the party’s current predicament. “Wherever the BJP does injustice, we have to support the National Conference despite their mistakes. It is an imperative,” he said.

The ghost of 1987

Beyond the tactical compromises of the present, Bhat also had to confront the historical baggage that continues to shadow the Congress in Jammu and Kashmir. When questioned about the allegations of rigging in the 1987 Assembly elections — widely regarded as the watershed moment that catalysed the armed insurgency — he offered no robust defence.

Referring to the broader narrative of J&K’s troubled relationship with the Centre, he termed it a “tragedy of errors.” On the specific charge of 1987, he acknowledged the “general perception and evidence that there was no electoral process fear.”

While he personally was not in Congress at the time, he conceded that “mistakes are made everywhere” and that such perceptions become part of the political narrative.

The 1987 election remains an open wound in Kashmir’s collective memory. Widely believed to have been rigged to keep the NC-Congress combine in power, it pushed a generation of disillusioned youth towards militancy. Members of the Muslim United Front, whose electoral prospects were thwarted, went on to lead armed groups — among them Muhammad Yusuf Shah, who became Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin, and his election manager Yasin Malik, who founded the JKLF.

Opposition parties in J&K have never let the Congress forget this legacy. During the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti repeatedly invoked 1987 on the campaign trail. “The ghosts of 1987 still haunt us,” she said. Her colleague Waheed Para was blunter: “One lakh lives lost due to the rigged 1987 elections in Kashmir”.

Peoples Conference president Sajad Lone has gone further, demanding an FIR against Farooq Abdullah and Congress leaders for their alleged role in the rigging. “Was there no accountability? Were they not humans? Don’t their lives matter?” he asked, referring to the thousands who died in the years of violence that followed.

The NC, for its part, has sought to deflect the blame back onto the Congress — pointing out that the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Mehbooba Mufti’s father and PDP founder, was the senior-most Congress leader in Kashmir in 1987, and later Union home minister during some of the bloodiest years of the insurgency.

For the Congress, there is no clean escape from this history. Bhat’s acknowledgement that “mistakes are made everywhere” was as close as the party has come to an admission — but it is unlikely to satisfy those for whom 1987 remains the original sin.

The Jammu disconnect

If the Congress is haunted by history in the valley, it is rendered virtually invisible in Jammu. Once a stronghold for the party, the region now returns a clean sweep for the BJP.

Bhat attributed this to the “politics of hate” and polarisation that has reshaped the electoral landscape. “In this polarised atmosphere, in which politics of hate runs… the voter is influenced by that,” he said.

The polarisation is not abstract. On February 13, BJP legislator Vikram Randhawa told the Assembly that Kashmir-origin people were “illegally occupying land” in Jammu city — 90% of encroachments on Jammu Development Authority land, he claimed, were by Kashmiris. It was, he said, “a sinister move to change the demography of Jammu”.

The remark drew sharp reactions from the NC, the PDP, and Lone’s Peoples Conference — but it also underscored the political terrain on which the Congress is trying to survive. In an environment where the BJP frames every issue through a communal lens, the Congress’s traditional secular pitch has found few takers.

Bhat expressed hope that economic distress and misgovernance might eventually lead to a public reckoning with the politics of division. But that hope, for now, remains speculative.

What remains

The Congress in Jammu and Kashmir is left with a set of unenviable choices. It can continue in an alliance where it is treated as a junior partner with no real influence. It can strike out on its own, risking complete marginalisation. Or it can reconcile itself to its diminished status and wait for a political realignment that may never come.

Bhat’s candour — rare in a political culture defined by euphemism and evasion — at least had the merit of clarity. The party has been “overpowered” by the NC, “decimated” by the BJP, and undermined by its own failures. It is an alliance partner that cannot dictate terms, an opposition party that is not in opposition, and a secular force struggling to find relevance in an increasingly polarised polity.

“Congress cannot run without the National Conference,” Bhat said. The question is whether, even with the NC, it can run at all.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by FPK staff and is published from a syndicated feed from KNS)