This spacious room now looks like a party office with Congress banners, posters, handbills and buntings splashed in every corner of the room. The telephone rings incessantly with workers and candidates seeking information about poll material and campaign programmes.

Dozens of copies of the Congress manifesto are neatly stacked in one corner of the room. The Central high command had sent 10,000 copies for local distribution. “Right now we are distributing poll material and manifesto copies in all the constituencies,” says Congress vice president Ghulam Nabi Monga, while handing a bundle of colourful posters to a candidate from south Kashmir.

The large posters carry pictures of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and JKPCC president Saif-ud-din Soz.

Each Congress contestant receives 2,000 posters and 4,000 flags with the party symbol etched on them. Candidates are also being provided 3,000 cloth banners with slogans of “peace” and “development” written on them in English and Urdu. Each candidate also gets 5,000 paper caps and cloth mufflers with pictures of Sonia Gandhi. Small cardboard badges and stickers with the party symbol printed on them are much in demand.

In Kashmir, the Congress has organised only two big rallies so far — at Sumbal and Ganderbal. Instead of big rallies, Congress candidates are focusing on door-to-door campaigning and village meetings. “Door-to- door meetings are the best possible way to reach the voters, especially in present circumstances,” says Abdul Gani Dar, Congress candidate from Rajpora.

Khushyun da mausum mudana hain, har gareeb di madat hurn karni hain, sonri shafi sahib di saprasti hain, NC sadi jaggi taqdeer hurn” (The season of joy is coming here, now we have to help the poor, the leadership of Shafi sahib is praiseworthy, the NC will change our destiny).

So goes a pahari song played at almost all the National Conference poll rallies in north Kashmir’s Uri constituency that is witnessing an extraordinary poll campaign.

Vehicles, from Sumos to trucks, hired by the NC, travel over the hilly terrain of this border constituency. They are fitted with microphones, from which pahari songs praising the NC and its candidate Mohammad Shafi Uri blare out. The songs have been composed by famous pahari singer, Tariq Pardesi.

Says Advocate Mohammad Haneef Dilber, chief polling agent of National Conference Uri candidate: “We had made around 750 CDs and people have locally copied it.”

The NC’s audio-visual campaign is visible only in Uri. In the rest of the Valley, the party campaigns in traditional ways. The party says it is distributing banners with pictures of late Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and Begum Abdullah, party patron Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar Abdullah. The banners carry the message of “development”.

The NC’s door-to-door campaign focuses on the “Vision Document for J&K”, which the party says is a practicable roadmap for the development of the state in the next decade. “The candidates talk about the peace process, governance and development. We also tell them the NC does not see any role for the Assembly election in the resolution of the Kashmir dispute and thus wants to de-link it from the party’s ideas about conflict resolution,” says a party leader.

The People’s Democratic Party is going about this election with a well worked out strategy. While its manifesto and vision document has plied people with “soft separatism”, its campaign plan has eschewed an elaborate mass contact programme so as not to run up against probable public anger.

The party, instead, chose to start with workers’ conventions in strategically located constituencies. Its first such convention was held at Anantnag in South Kashmir with the party’s patron and the former chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed presiding over it. However, the programme soon ran into protests from the people from adjacent villages.

The subsequent conventions attracted a substantial number of workers. Addressed by senior PDP leaders including Mufti Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti, the party has been able to build up a poll tempo rivalled only by its chief political adversary in the Valley, National Conference.

Now that the first poll phase in the Valley has been a success, the PDP like other Valley-centric parties, has mustered the confidence to hold big public meetings. Recently, the party ventured into the deep countryside to galvanise support in its favour. Senior PDP leader Tariq Hameed Karra held a series of rallies in hilly Kangan on Tuesday and drew significant crowds.

Suddenly the party’s posters with pictures of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Mehbooba have gone up on the walls across the Valley. The message on the posters is invariably political: The PDP seeks a mandate for a Greater J&K, which means Kashmir across the LoC divide.

In October, while still undecided about participation in the polls, the party formally unveiled its self-rule document as an opening gambit. The document called for a drastic redefining of Kashmir’s relations with New Delhi in a broader politico-economic framework involving Pakistan.

Now the PDP reminds people of the agitation over the Amarnath land transfer and the “one-sided accord” with the Sangharsh Samiti. It seeks the release of separatist leaders. The party seeks its election not only for the formation of the government but also for the “resolution of Kashmir”. It talks of the Jamia Nagar encounter, reiterating the need for creating educational avenues for Kashmiri Muslim youth within the state.