All Eyes On High-Stakes Battle In Kupwara
As Kupwara constituency in North Kashmir is gearing up for the last leg of the Assembly polls, the electoral prospects of all parties are equally formidable and challenging. Major candidates in the fray include People’s Conference (PC) chief Sajjad Gani Lone, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Mir Mohammad Fayaz, Nasir Aslam Wani of the National Conference (NC), and Peerzada Firdous of the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP).
In the 2014 Assembly polls, PC’s Bashir Ahmad Dar won the seat. He secured 24,754 votes and defeated PDP’s Mir Mohammad Fayaz by a margin of just 151 votes. Though Lone’s party maintains a strong base in Kupwara, NC, PDP and with the recent Lok Sabha win from Baramulla, AIP also exerts a crucial influence in the assembly segment.
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Sources in PC told the Greater Kashmir that aside from Handwara, Lone had to fight from the Kupwara assembly segment due to pressure from the party.
“Handwara is a cakewalk for us. So we want our party chairman to fight from the Kupwara segment also to ensure win from there. It would boost the morale of our party workers in the Kupwara segment,” Greater Kashmir quotes, as a PC leader is saying.
Meanwhile, Lone’s decision to contest from Kupwara is seen as a courageous act by the political analysts since parts of the assembly segments of Lolab, Handwara, and Kupwara are not viewed as a safe bet for his party.
In the polls, Lone is facing his former party colleague Mir Mohammad Fayaz. He was a former Rajya Sabha member from north Kashmir. Initially belonged to the PDP, he cut ties with the party in 2021, two years after the abrogation of Article 370, and joined the Lone’s party in the same year.
After quitting active politics in September last year, Fayaz rejoined the PDP this year. His re-entry is being observed as PDP strengthening their base in Kupwara. This time, Fayaz hopes to win the seat, avenging his defeat in the 2014 polls.
Similar to Lone, NC’s Nasir Aslam Wani Sogami is fielding from Kupwara for the first time. He serves as the Provincial President of Kashmir. A close associate of Omar Abdullah, Nasir is the grandson of former minister Ghulam Nabi Sogami.
In 2022, he was appointed as constituency in-charge of Kupwara, his ancestral district. In 2008 polls, he won from Amira Kadal constituency, but in 2014, he was defeated by Altaf Bukhari, who was then part of the PDP, by a margin of 5341 votes.
In the current election, Sogami is relying on the traditional vote bank of the party and the support of senior leaders like Mir Saifullah and Qaiser Jamsheed Lone, who earlier represented the areas that are currently a part of the Kupwara constituency.
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AIP candidate Peerzada Firdous, or Firdous Baba, stated that the development and progress of the Kupwara assembly segment is his goal. He claimed that people of Kupwara have been exploited, and AIP believes in restoring the dignity of the common masses. He urged cooperation from electorates in Kupwara so that a new chapter of development is written for the constituency.
The major concerns the constituency faces include economic development and job creation. Kupwara, along with 39 other constituencies, will go to the polls on October 1, and the result will be declared on October 8.
