Sajad Lone addresses a rally on Sunday in Handwara, once his father’s bastion. Voting is on Tuesday. ( Source: Express photo by Shuiab Masoodi)Twelve years after the assassination of his father Abdul Gani Lone, Sajad Lone finds his tumultuous political journey at a crossroads. Defeat could mean the end and, even if he wins, the road ahead will be full of bumps.
Sajad’s candidates across Kupwara face tough contests, but the biggest fight is his own. In his father’s Handwara, Sajad is in a triangular contest against sitting National Coneference MLA Choudhary Ramzan — against whom his father had fought bitterly — and PDP’s Ghulam Mohideen Sofi, Sajad’s own creation, a shopkeeper whom he had made his proxy in 2002 and who defeated Ramzan. “I am not contesting against Sajad; he is contesting against me. It is his first (assembly) election; I am contesting my third,” Sofi says.
A fourth contestant, Ajaz Ahmad Sofi, belongs to Awami Ittihad Party of Engineer Rashid who, too, graduated from the late Lone’s political nursery. “If Sajad wants to become CM, why did he field a dummy candidate in 2002 rather than contest himself? Forty thousand lives would have been saved,” Ajaz says. Sajad’s aspirations to the CM’s chair have been a highlight of his campaign.
At any other time, no one would have bet on Lone’s son losing in what was the father’s bastion. Lone hailed from a remote village but his party, the People’s Conference, had its centre in Handwara. His story was a classic political thriller: a poor village boy fights hardship to become a lawyer, join politics and set up a vibrant party that takes on the might of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. Lone was a key constituent of Muslim United Front, a conglomerate of political and religious groups to oppose the NC-Congress alliance.
He went into separatist politics after a poll debacle in 1987. Lone lost his seat to Ramzan by 10 votes in 1983; in 1987, amid allegations of rigging, he lost to Ramzan by 430 votes. Along with Lone, several of his MUF colleagues joined the separatist movement; his party’s support base was primarily restive young men who, too, would join the movement.
Although Lone was once close to the JKLF , it was Al Barq, an outfit born in mountainous north Kashmir, especially Kupwara, that came to be seen as an armed wing of his party.
Lone was killed in 2002. This was when Sajad came into the limelight, with an outburst against Pakistan and his father’s colleagues in the separatist camp. He fielded proxy candidates in the assembly elections held months later, leading to a split in Hurriyat Conference. While Syed Ali Shah Geelani wanted the ouster of People’s Conference, the faction led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq didn’t agree because PC’s representative in Hurriyat wasn’t Sajad but continued…
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