The Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency votes on 13 May, as part of the fourth phase of the 2024 general election—the first since the Narendra Modi government abrogated Article 370 of the Constitution, which gave limited autonomy to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party claims that peace has returned to the Kashmir Valley, even as several reports show that it is clamping down on civil liberties in the region.
The BJP is not contesting any of the three Lok Sabha seats in the Kashmir division. However, during a Jammu rally, in April, the union home minister, Amit Shah, asked the electorate not to vote for the Congress or the two major Kashmiri parties, the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party. If the voters heeded his advice, they would be left with only two major options: Altaf Bukhari’s Apni Party, in the constituencies of Srinagar and Anantnag–Rajouri, and Sajjad Gani Lone, the People’s Conference candidate in Baramulla. Both parties are accused of being BJP proxies.
On 5 August 2019, Shah announced that, apart from revoking the state’s autonomous status, the government was bifurcating Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories. The decision was announced amid a brutal communications blockade, increased militarisation and widespread discontent in the valley. Even the most senior political leaders of Jammu and Kashmir, such as the NC’s Farooq Abdullah and the PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti, both former chief ministers, were placed under house arrest for several months. There was a vacuum of political leadership in Kashmir, which different factions have since been trying to fill.
About a year after the abrogation, seven political parties—the Congress, the NC, the PDP, the People’s Conference, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Awami National Conference and the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement—signed the second Gupkar Declaration, pledging to fight together to restore Article 370 and other constitutional provisions. The Congress denied membership of the subsequent People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration, while the PC and the JKPM pulled out of the PAGD over the next couple of years. Javaid Mustafa Mir, the JKPM president, then joined AP.