The battle over Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) leadership has become more intense ever since its current chief Tariq Hamid Karra led a hand-picked team of leaders and workers to Delhi for a protest at Jantar Mantar in support of reinstating Statehood. This led to the battle lines between the rival groups becoming sharper as Karra has done nothing to keep the party united during his tenure so far. In fact, he, through his cronies, has fanned factionalism by sidelining senior, established and influential leaders.
There has been a near total revolt against Karra in the Kashmir unit while the Jammu unit has also been in shambles.
Karra, a former PDP leader who joined the Congress in 2017, was appointed President of Jammu & Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) on August 16, 2024, replacing Vikar Rasool Wani just before the assembly elections. This move took everyone surprise but further shock was in reserve as the new incumbent, arrogant and bureaucratic by nature, failed to take everyone along and unite the party to face the formidable BJP, particularly in Jammu region.
Karra’s elevation came amid internal resistance: many senior leaders had demanded Vikar Rasool’s removal, accusing him of lacking the leadership qualities.
After the 2024 Assembly elections, in which Congress won just six seats (5 in Kashmir and one in Jammu), a section of senior leaders submitted a formal resolution to Congress President Mallikarjun?Kharge, accusing Karra of misconduct, electoral manipulation, financial irregularities, and sidelining traditional party veterans.
Karra’s strange style of working and insistence on fomenting groupism and his penchant to give space to only a few hangers-on who have little or no influence on ground, has put the Congress in yet another peculiar situation. While there were allegations that a strong BJP- sleeper cell was guiding him on contours of Jammu politics, the critics now claim Karra has tried forcing a “PDP proxy Congress” by promoting recent entrants over long standing members. Net result is the Congress in Jammu and Kashmir has been taken over by the BJP and PDP sleeper cells. This has resulted in the genuine Congresspersons of different age and genre getting sidelined and feeling suffocated. Intriguingly the high-command has preferred to look the other way.
Fact of the matter is that the Congress has always come to power in the erstwhile state on the basis of its strong base in Jammu region where now, for the last decade, it is direct contest with the BJP with latter almost pushing Congress to the brink. The successive electoral losses in Lok Sabha and assembly elections convey the story and the pathetic state of the party particularly in the Jammu region.
Some Jammu leaders allege systematic marginalization, describing Karra as unsympathetic towards Jammu region and accuse him of having a narrow Valley-centric view and not taking the old and genuine Congress leaders and workers there into confidence. They feel a systematic attempt has been made to push them to the corner at the behest of a small vested interest in the Jammu unit.
Critics argue that the Congress has drifted ideologically, becoming out of sync with Jammu’s socio-political ethos, and Karra’s PDP style and Kashmir-centric hardcore views are cited as exacerbating these divisions.
With National Conference and PDP dominating the political space in Kashmir, and Congress in direct contest with BJP in Jammu, the real political contest lies in Jammu. If Congress retrieves its space in this region and weakens BJP in the Hindu belt, it will be able to find its feet in the Valley too. There is no scope for the vice versa. The crux of the matter is that the road to Congress’s survival, under the circumstances, starts from Jammu and Karra seems either oblivious of this fact or simply looking the other way. With his PDP background and strong views, as minister in the Congress-PDP coalition government on issues related to Jammu and Hindus (Bam Bam Bole agitation in particular), he alone cannot inspire a political narrative in Jammu, which needs more focus and power to make a gaping hole in the BJP vote-bank.
Karra’s tryst with controversies took a fresh turn from the manner he planned his Delhi visit with a group of supporters while others living out. Reports suggest Karra and his close associates had protested against the AICC leaders inviting Vikar Rasool Wani, presently a CWC member, to sit on the dais when Rahul Gandhi was addressing the gathering. The controversy, these reports suggest, took a new dimension when Karra feigned illness and remained absent from the high-level press conference held at the AICC headquarters the same evening. Did he become incommunicado and even not took phone calls from AICC in charge of Jammu and Kashmir, Syed Nassir Hussain?
What makes the matter further intriguing is that Karra, despite not “feeling well”, preferred to travel by train (Vande Bharat) to cover 600 kilometers and sitting for eight hours. How could he do this if he was not feeling well? There’s no credible source supporting claims of him feigning illness. This lends further credence to his arrogant style of functioning and even mocking at the party high-command by giving a miss to the press conference attended by senior leader Digvijay Singh and Syeed Nassir.
Many insiders argue his perceived insecurity is resulting in the party loyalists being pushed to the corners and the stalwarts marginalised. In the face of this scenario the young set of leaders are in a quandary and oscillating between the two factions. So are the old and established leaders, who do not know what to do under the circumstances.
Other stalwarts and many Congress supporters, both in Jammu and Kashmir regions, feel that the party should not be led by someone with lack of understanding of the Valley’s cultural route and political ethos, and having no clue about the political nitty-gritty, particularly the region and caste configurations of Jammu region.
There is a strong case to work out a model whereby Jammu gets precedence even in the leadership issue in order to take on BJP. This is direly needed if the saffron party’s core Hindu vote bank, which earlier was Congress’s support base, is to be targeted.
The question currently confronting the Congress is how to take on the BJP to weaken its Jammu base. This is important for the party’s revival and to form the government in future. The leaders of both Jammu and Kashmir regions should view as part of the war-time strategy rather than viewing it from the prism of one region or the other.
The first priority of the Congress should be to set the house in order and checkmate the BJP effectively. The rest will follow automatically. The Congress leaders must close their ranks, across the two regions, and keep vested interests aside for a broader cause.
Although the Congress high command, it is learnt, is keeping a close tab on the developments and devising ways to manage the internal tensions, much will also depend how the ruling clique in the PCC behaves. Otherwise, the lurking question would be whether Karra’s leadership will continue or the Congress returns to a stalwart as per the traditional Congress governance model.
