Sajid Raina
Srinagar, Nov 14: In a result that has sent ripples through Kashmir’s political establishment, the National Conference (NC) on Friday lost the Budgam Assembly seat for the first time in nearly half a century, a stunning break in a constituency long treated as the party’s safest ideological home.
Peoples Democratic Party’s Aga Syed Muntazar Mehdi secured 21,576 votes, defeating NC’s Aga Syed Mehmood, who polled 17,098, ending a 47-year winning streak that survived insurgency, boycotts, political realignments and generational churn.
The 4,478-vote margin, analysts said, is less a number and more a verdict on internal rifts, shifting loyalties, and a quiet rebellion brewing within the NC’s own Shia belt.
For the NC, Budgam has never been an ordinary constituency. From Ghulam Hussain Geelani’s victories in 1977, 1983, 1987 and 1996, to Aga Ruhullah’s sweep of the 2000s, the seat has functioned as both a family turf and a party bastion, uninterrupted even in the most turbulent phases of Kashmir’s politics. But this election marked the first time the NC went into Budgam without the campaign muscle of Aga Syed Ruhullah, its most influential Shia leader and now a Lok Sabha MP.
Ruhullah, who had fiercely campaigned for Omar Abdullah in the 2024 assembly battle, later distanced himself from his own party, accusing it of drifting away from the commitments made before the Assembly polls. His refusal to join the campaign for NC candidate Aga Mehmood created what one analyst called “a silence louder than speeches.”
If Ruhullah’s withdrawal deflated NC’s traditional machinery, PDP’s Waheed Para supplied the counterweight and, as analysts agree, the momentum. Para’s long, persistent street-level mobilisation from neighbourhood clusters to Shia mohallas built a network of micro-engagements that reshaped voter behaviour in a constituency that rarely shifts. His presence was constant, granular, and highly visible.
“Para’s campaign didn’t just reach voters, it sat with them,” a senior political observer said. “Against NC’s absence of star power, it turned into a Parra-mount push.”
Though the result appeared dramatic, political watchers say the ground had been softening for a year. Discontent over local issues, a growing youth pushback, and the perception of an ageing political order had begun to erode the NC’s cushion.
