If the low voter turnout persists in the Valley's other two seats, Srinagar and Baramullah, where polling is to be held on May 7 and 13 respectively then it will pour water on the hopes of those wishing speedy return of normal political activity in Kashmir. Voting in Ladakh, the state's sixth seat, will take place on May 13.

Notwithstanding the low voting percentage, optimists can draw some consolation from the fact that Anantnag's 25 per cent turnout is over ten per cent higher than that in 2004 Lok Sabha poll. But the fact that the average voting percentage in the constituency's 16 Assembly segments in December was around 56 per cent, the big drop of over 30 per cent now is surely a cause of concern for those who believed that the Valley had turned its face away from the separatists.

Anantnag is a stronghold of the separatists as also of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's People's Democratic Party. In 2004, Mehbooba Mufti, daughter of Mufti Sayeed and president of the PDP, was elected to the Lok Sabha from Anantnag. She later resigned after she was elected to the Assembly in December. Prior to Mehbooba, Mufti Sayeed was elected from Anantnag to the Lok Sabha. Now the seat is witnessing almost a direct fight between PDP and National Conference candidates.

Surprisingly, both Mufti and his daughter did not come to vote yesterday reportedly because “Mufti Sayeed was busy campaigning in Srinagar while Mehbooba was out of station”. Their not casting vote is a reflection of the soft separatism they have been following on the Kashmir issue and has drawn flak from NC President Farooq Abdullah. What is intriguing is that while the PDP held segments witnessed virtually no voting, it was high poll percentage of over 50 in the Assembly segments held by the National Conference and the Congress which gave the constituency its 25 per cent percentage.

The low voting percentage in Anantnag cannot be entirely attributed to the militants' poll boycott threats. The people had thronged the polling booths in the Assembly elections defying similar threats. The unexpectedly high voting percentage then had forced even Sayeed Ali Shah Geelani, chief of the hardliner All Party Hurriyat Conference, to bemoan that “this voting has pushed us far back in our struggle for freedom. I had never thought that the people would turn out to vote like this. The boycott is an act which has displayed our immaturity”. On high voter turnout, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, chairman of the moderate Hurriyat Conference had said, “There is a need for us to introspect”.

Obviously it was their introspection that initially prompted the moderates not to issue any poll boycott call for the Lok Sabha polls. But later under pressure from the militant outfits from across the border and from within the state they took a U-turn and called for a poll boycott in Kashmir.

Their boycott call, however, did not work in the Jammu-Poonch and Udhampur-Doda constituencies of the Jammu region where separatists writ does not run and where polling was held on April 16 and 23. The polling percentages there were 48 and 46 per cent respectively.#