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.

... contd.