In Anantnag, public endorse Mehbooba Mufti
Mehbooba Mufti's victory at the Anantnag by-poll is not just a reflection of popular support for the Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir but equally an endorsement of her party's alliance with the BJP in the State. In a sense, the PDP-BJP tie-up was and remains an oddity, given the significantly different views and ideologies of both outfits but let us not forget that after the Assembly election last year, it was precisely such an arrangement that best reflected the people's mandate. Yet, following the demise of Mehbooba Mufti's father and then Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, as a result of which the Anantnag Assembly seat fell vacant, the coalition Government faced an existential threat. With the elder statesman gone and no one of his stature to replace him, it seemed like the glue that held together the alliance had evaporated.
Mehbooba Mufti herself wasn't convinced of the durability of the alliance. There were complaints of the two parties being unable to find common ground, of one dominating other, of the other being too demanding and so on and so forth. The alliance broke down and there were several weeks of talks and negotiations, while many pundits opined that soon another election would be called; that the PDP-BJP project had been collapsed beyond repair. Ultimately though the naysayers were proved wrong, and the alliance bounced back — and if the Anantnag by-poll is anything to go by, it has come back stronger and more durable than before.
Proof of this lies in the numbers itself. Mehbooba Mufti won the election with a whopping margin of 12,000 votes. Of the 28,500 votes cast, she almost got 17,700, while Hilal Shah of the Congress got 5,600 and Iftikhar Misger of the National Conference secured 2,800. And before critics write off these figures as ones that are only to be expected from Anantnag given that is the de facto family constituency of the Muftis, their home turf so to say, factor this: During the 2014 lok Sabha election, the elder Mufti actually faced quite a fight from Shah, and only won by a relatively low margin of 6,000 votes. On paper, therefore, Shah actually had a fairly good chance of winning this election.
Moreover, let's also keep in mind that though Mehbooba Mufti is an experience grassroots leader and very much her father's daughter, they are still different politicians. For one, she is generally considered to be a more hardline leader than her father, whose flexible politics allowed him friends and well-wishers in all camps. There was significant concern that Mehbooba Mufti's decision to continue in alliance with the BJP would cost her core votebank. And then if she lost the election, it would be a terrible embarrassment for her, her party and also their alliance partner, the BJP, which had unequivocally supported her as the chief ministerial candidate after Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. This would have only fuelled further unrest and uncertainty in the State.