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.

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