Hamlet Haunts Kashmir’s Regional Political Parties socialnews.xyz

After the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, politics in the state is set to metamorphose into a new avatar. The major regional political parties, which have used the plank of special status for most of the last 72 years, will now need to rediscover their strategies while saving their credibility. Their leaders must be reassessing their strategies while being under detention and would possibly unveil their plans once freed from custody. All these decades, these parties, mainly National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have played the protectors of the special status of the state and tried to outsmart each other on the issue. They even stretched the issue of special status to the respective demands for ‘greater autonomy’ and ‘self-rule’. The contest between them was about who would strengthen the special status more. In the process, the developmental issues like employment, infrastructure, healthcare, and education never found prominence in the electoral discourse. With the abolition of the special status altogether, the Modi-led central government has said it intends to bring development into the prime focus and make Jammu and Kashmir one of the top developed places in the next 10 years.