Trends on the electoral stage indicate that the ruling establishment’s strategy with regard to Jammu and Kashmir has switched. It is difficult to understand why.
For most of the past five years, there was an all-out effort to suppress, jail, or at least marginalise those who had taken separatist positions in the past. But some of those are now springing back to the political centre stage.
Jamaat-e-Islami’s recent announcement that it will directly contest assembly elections caused eyebrows to be raised. For, since the constitutional changes of 2019, the administration has gone after Jamaat in particular, summarily sacking and transferring government employees with Jamaat connections. Even non-Jamaat relatives of those who had been the leading lights of Jamaat in the past were not spared.