The Latest Breaking News from PDP

In one sense, not much is at stake in the ongoing election to the legislative assembly of the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

As Kashmir votes in its first regional elections in a decade, Waheed-ur-Rehman Para battles his own demons to contest.

These are the first regional elections in Kashmir since New Delhi stripped its semi-autonomous status in 2019.

For decades, the Jamaat-e-Islami boycotted elections. Now, the banned group has upended its position—and the campaign.

In the 2014 assembly elections, when Jammu and Kashmir was still a state, the Bharatiya Janata Party got its highest tally of 25 out of 37 assembly seats. In 2019, the region lost its autonomy and was cleaved into two demoted union territories (Ladakh not having an elected assembly).

People’s Democratic Party leader Waheed ur Rehman Para, who has been the party’s youth face, was booked under the stringent UAPA in 2020 and spent two years in incarceration. Now, he is fighting the assembly poll from Pulwama.

Newslaundry’s Manisha Pande sits down with Iltija Mufti, PDP’s candidate from Bijbehara, ahead of the first Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections in 10 years.

In the assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir, set to take place after a 10-year hiatus, the political temperature has intensified with the entry of several local leaders previously accused of separatist leanings. Besides the candidates from mainstream parties like the National Conference and PDP, the polls will see Sheikh…

Langate is quiet just as it was in the beginning of the Lok Sabha election in April. But the sleepy north Kashmir town is expected to buzz soon with political activity, and erupt, much like it did in May, in support of the jailed Awami Ittehad Party leader Engineer Rashid.

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There is little that parties in poll-bound Jammu and Kashmir are offering for journalists despite increased challenges to press freedom over the last five years in the erstwhile state.