Showing a rare enthusiasm for elections, villagers lined up outside polling booths in three north Kashmir constituencies today—the more than 60% turnout being seen as a mandate for self rule, development, even a larger stake in the Indo-Pak peace process.

If anything was missing from this acrimonious electoral battle, it was the traditional “poll-boycott constituency.” For, instead of militants, this time mainstream political parties were blamed for orchestrating attacks on rivals, faking militant posters to alter voter turnout.

On the campaign trail, National Conference president Omar Abdullah advocated a direct dialogue with Hizbul and praised Pak President Pervez Musharraf’s proposals to resolve the Kashmir dispute. His rival and ruling PDP president Mehbooba Mufti called for porous borders and took credit for reopening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road. So the local became the national, the national the local.

In fact, Abdullah was very critical of Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad’s recent statement that the NDA Government’s dialogue with gun-wielding and masked Hizbul militants was a shame.

‘‘They (Hizbul militants) were not gun wielding. There was a ceasefire,” Abdullah said. ‘‘We want a ceasefire in Kashmir so that a genuine political process pushes peace forward.”

For the PDP, its soft “separatist politics” meant that the moderate Hurriyat was its main opposition. So it advocated self-rule and open movement of people and goods across the LoC.

When former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed campaigned for his party candidate in Rafiabad, he referred to the achievements of his party’s three year-rule which saw the first bus roll down the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road.

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