Return Of Fayaz Ahmad Mir, Revamping PDP's Prospects In Baramulla (image: x.com/FayazMiroffice)

Former Rajya Sabha member Fayaz Ahmad Mir rejoined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in March. He returned to the party fold after three years. In the Lok Sabha elections, he is the PDP candidate for Baramulla parliamentary constituency.

Fayaz Ahmad Mir was distant from the PDP after the 2019 constitutional changes in Jammu and Kashmir. Resigning from the party, he joined the Sajad Lone-led People’s Conference (PC) in August 2021. However, in 2023, he parted ways with the PDP  and announced his break from active politics for a while.

Following the abrogation of Article 370, many former ministers and legislators quit the PDP and joined the People”s Conference, or Apni Party. Last year, the PDP chief and former chief minister managed to reorganise the party. The PDP leadership believes that the return of the Mir to the party will bolster the party”s base in North Kashmir, especially in the Kupwara region.

Mir served as a Rajya Sabha member from 2015 to 2021. In the 2014 Assembly elections, he contested unsuccessfully from the Kupwara assembly segment and came in second, losing by a margin of 151 votes. Mir and Nazir Ahmad Laway, two PDP MPs, came under severe criticism from different political fronts in 2019 as they abstained from voting against the triple talaq in Parliament, which helped the BJP  pass the bill. Then, National Conference (NC) vice president Omar Abdullah accused the PDP chief on social media of helping the BJP-led central government with the required numbers needed to pass the bill.

This time, Mir is pitted against NC”s Omar Abdullah, PC”s Sajad Gani Lone,  and  Awami Ittehad Party (AIP)”s Abdul Rashid Sheikh. The Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency covers 18 Assembly segments and is spread across four districts, Baramulla, Kupwara, Bandipora (north Kashmir), and Budgam (central Kashmir). Since 1971, the NC has won the constituency nine times, the Congress twice, and the PDP once.