Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)’s ongoing assembly elections are drawing to a close. On October 1, voters in 16 constituencies in the Kashmir valley and 24 constituencies in the Jammu region will exercise their franchise in the third and final phase of the election. Counting is scheduled for October 8 and results will be announced the same day.

These are the first assembly elections being held in J&K since 2014, when India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the regional People’s Democratic Party (PDP) allied to form a coalition government. The ongoing elections are also the first assembly polls to be held since August 2019 when J&K’s autonomy was revoked and the erstwhile state was bifurcated into two union territories—Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

In the Hindu-majority Jammu region, the contest is a straight fight between the Congress and National Conference (NC) alliance on one side and the BJP on the other.

The predominantly-Muslim Kashmir valley is witnessing multi-corner contests between the PDP, the Congress-NC alliance, and several independent candidates, many of who are backed by individuals and organizations, some of them banned or unregistered, which are from the separatist fold. Since campaigning began, these individuals and organizations have upset the calculations of Kashmir’s established mainstream political parties — the NC and the PDP.

Anger with the BJP is running high in the valley, especially following the Narendra Modi government’s unilateral revocation of Article 370 in 2019, and its ruthless crackdown on Kashmiri parties and people opposed to that controversial decision. The NC and the PDP were expecting to be the main beneficiaries of the anti-BJP vote in the valley.

That has now changed.

The situation has gotten more complex with the physical entry of Baramulla member of parliament Sheikh Abdul Rashid aka “Engineer Rashid” in the election campaign.

Rashid, who has been in Delhi’s Tihar jail since 2019, charged in a terror funding case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, contested the April-May general elections from Baramulla constituency. Despite contesting from prison, he defeated political heavyweights, the former J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah of the NC and People’s Conference President Sajad Lone.

Rashid was not released after his election victory. When assembly elections in J&K were announced, the jailed parliamentarian’s family announced that Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) would back candidates in the upcoming polls. “We were preparing to seek votes for these candidates in our jailed leader’s name,” a long-time aide of Rashid told The Diplomat.

Then on September 11, Rashid was granted interim bail until October 2 to allow him to campaign for the J&K assembly elections. A day later, the jailed Baramulla MP walked free.

In the weeks since, Rashid has addressed massive rallies and given interviews to multiple media outlets. “His presence on the electoral battleground in Kashmir has electrified voters,” a professor at Kashmir University in Srinagar told The Diplomat. The two main Kashmiri parties, the NC and PDP, “which till Rashid’s release were busy deriding each other over their ties with the BJP in the past, now began to train their guns at Rashid.”

His sudden release from jail, “has the NC and PDP running scared,” Rashid’s aide said. Apprehensive about his impact on voters, these parties gunned for him.

Questioning why Rashid was given “special treatment” and released on interim bail unlike other Kashmiri leaders who were jailed on similar charges and under the same law, Abdullah alleged at an election rally that the BJP decision to release him during the campaign was “a strategic move to sway votes and aid the BJP in gaining control of the [J&K] assembly.”

Rumors are doing the rounds in Kashmir that “the BJP government let Rashid loose on the electoral battleground in J&K on the condition that he would join hands with the BJP in a post-election alliance to form the government,” the Kashmir University professor said.

PDP Chief and former J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti described Rashid’s party as a BJP “proxy by helping it financially and through other means.”

Rashid has rejected these allegations. “I am a victim of the Bharatiya Janata Party,” he said soon after his release from jail. “I will fight against Modi’s ideology till my last breath…I am coming to Kashmir to unite my people, not to divide them.”

Are Kashmiri voters convinced? Thousands of voters have been attending his rallies to hear what he has to say. Will it translate into votes?

Rashid’s aide said of the 34 candidates fielded by the AIP (33 are in Kashmir and one in Jammu) in this election, the party expects to pick up over a dozen, many of them in Kupwara, Handwara and Baramulla districts that will vote on October 1.

The AIP and the banned Jamaat-e-Islami, J&K’s largest Islamist party have entered into a “strategic” alliance. This has further “rattled” the Kashmiri mainstream parties, the aide said.

However, long-standing watchers of J&K’s political scene are skeptical about Rashid repeating the success of the general election. “People vote differently in assembly and parliamentary elections. The issues and concerns that determine their choices are different,” a Srinagar-based journalist told The Diplomat.

While Rashid does evoke “a certain degree” of sympathy among voters, “that sentiment won’t necessarily translate into support for his party in this election,” Kashmiri political analyst Noor Ahmed Baba told Frontline magazine.

“The kind of emotional appeal he had as a victim, as a prisoner, and as a representative of many Kashmiris who have suffered has all faded since his release,” Baba said, stressing that Rashid “cannot dislodge an already existing party like NC.”

During the general elections, the BJP, anticipating voter rejection in Kashmir did not contest in the valley but backed proxy parties. That experiment fell flat as the candidates it backed performed so poorly that they lost their security deposits.

Will its ploy to churn J&K’s electoral waters by freeing Rashid on bail to campaign work to its benefit this time around?

The assembly elections are expected to throw up a hung house. Rashid, the jailed separatist-turned-parliamentarian could emerge the king-maker.