Jammu and Kashmir’s two political formations, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the People’s Conference (PC), led by Mehbooba Mufti and Sajad Lone respectively, are engaged in a bitter war of words. Both groups accuse each other of being “agency props” seeking to create fissures and political and electoral fragmentation.
Key Kashmir watchers have expressed dismay over the lowering standards of political discourse in a region that lost its statehood, special status, semi-autonomy, flag, and Constitution in August 2019.
A purported audio clip stirred the latest political controversy. In the clip about seven-and-a-half minutes long, an uncivil conversation between the two politicians of rival groups upset many in Kashmir on July 30. The conversation was unparliamentary and abusive; one required headphones to make out its contents.
PDP’s Yasir Reshi and PC’s Ishfaq Gilkar exchanged non-stop invective during the phone call, threatening each other with dire consequences. Such a culture of vitriolic abuse against political or ideological opponents is a first in Kashmir. Reshi is organising secretary of the PDP and formerly a Member of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Council (MLC). Gilkar is a spokesperson of the PC.
Hours after this exchange of verbal volleys, insults and threats, the PDP leadership addressed a crowded press conference at the party’s Srinagar office, where Iltija Mufti and MLA Waheed Parra, from Pulwama, alleged that the PC was “weaponising Central agencies to break the PDP” and to “coerce many PDP leaders to leave the party to join the PC”.
Reshi was present at the press conference. Speaking last, he claimed that the Sajad Lone-led PC had been pressuring him to leave the PDP, speak ill of party president and former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, and join the PC, or else face unimaginable consequences.
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Reshi said PC’s Ishfaq Gilkar had telegraphed to him that “meetings with the NIA (National Investigation Agency), IB (Intelligence Bureau), CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) and other government agencies have been recently held at the residence of Sajad Gani Lone, to chart out a plan to pressurise and threaten me”.
A revolving door of defections
In the aftermath of the withdrawal of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and semi-autonomy in August 2019, Reshi left the PDP to join the PC. He later moved to the Engineer Rashid-led Awami Ittehad Party (AIP), before returning to the PDP fold.
“I never wanted to quit the PDP in 2019,” Reshi said, arguing that circumstances had left him with no choice. “I was scared for myself, for my family, for my kid. Not anymore,” Reshi told Frontline, adding: “Sajad Lone told me in my face to quit the PDP, launch attacks against Mehbooba Mufti’s person, or go to jail.”
Reshi alleged that Imran Sheikh, considered Sajad Lone’s right-hand man, had been tasked with attacking every institution and every Islamic preacher and scholar in Kashmir.
“In his prolonged monologues and vlogs, Imran Sheikh speaks ill against everyone, even the chief cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq Sahib and other preachers like Hadi Sahib and Masroor Ansari,” Reshi said, adding, “I’m no longer scared of going to jail. But the matter does not end here.”
Waheed Parra, senior PDP leader and MLA from south Kashmir’s Pulwama constituency, provided context for the claim made by his party colleague. He told Frontline: “As many as 40 leaders of our party, including 13 MLAs, have been forced to leave the PDP since August 2019. I was arrested by the NIA soon after I filed my nomination as a DDC [District Development Council] candidate. I am not a separatist and have done nothing against the interests of the Indian state, and yet I faced an unimaginable ordeal, a prolonged prison term and harassment.”
PDP leader Iltija Mufti (centre) along with PDP Leader Yasir Reshi (right) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) MLA Waheed Para (left) during a press conference in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on July 30, 2026.
| Photo Credit:
Imran Nissar
After the press conference, Parra spoke to Frontline separately. He argued that political discourse in Kashmir ought to be dignified, and that trivial issues should not deflect attention from the main ones.
“There is no reason for a Kashmiri to speak against a fellow Kashmiri at a time when Jama’at-e-Islami is a proscribed organisation, hundreds of schools affiliated with the Falah-e-Aam Trust have been shut, thousands of Kashmiris are detained, political prisoners are not being released, residential structures are razed outside the purview of law, properties are being attached, employees terminated unilaterally, our books are banned and history is being erased,” he told Frontline.
Iltija Mufti, Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter, argued that if a political party uses state agencies to threaten rival parties, and such actions go unchecked, politics in Jammu and Kashmir will lose its meaning. “This is gutter-level politics by the People’s Conference,” she said.
She claimed PC leaders were invoking Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s name to threaten PDP leaders. “People’s Conference’s top leadership has started issuing grave threats to PDP’s Yasir Reshi. In these menacing phone calls he claims to have the support of ED & NIA—agencies both under the Home Minister. Shri @AmitShah your name is being used to intimidate & browbeat people in our party. Please intervene if this isn’t being done at the behest of MHA. For those who are indulging in these misadventures, best to back off, or else be prepared for the consequences of your petty intimidation,” Iltija Mufti wrote on X soon after the press conference.
She demanded an impartial probe into the alleged “threats issued by Sajad Lone and his party workers”, asking why no action was being taken against Lone “for misusing and weaponising central agencies to harass and intimidate political rivals”.
Top sources in the PDP told Frontline that more party leaders and workers would address the media in the coming days with detailed accounts of the alleged coercive tactics. “Leaders whom Sajad Lone and his workers pressured to leave the PDP will soon hold a joint press conference and place on record a direct account of how threats of jail term and action by investigative agencies were used to intimidate and coerce them into switching sides and speaking against our leader, Mehbooba Mufti,” a PDP leader said.
The PDP’s slide
It is not uncommon for politicians and political formations to suffer reputational damage on Kashmir’s dicey political turf. Founded by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in 1999, the PDP won 16 seats in the 2002 Assembly election, improved its tally to 21 in 2008, and to 28 in 2014. Twice, the party stitched together coalition governments—with the Congress from 2002 to 2008, and with the BJP from March 2015 to June 2018.
The partnership with the BJP came at a huge political cost. In Kashmir, the alliance was deemed “unholy”, and pundits had accurately predicted it would prove “political suicide” for the PDP. In the 2024 Assembly election, the PDP’s seat tally fell to three; a subsequent by-election win in central Kashmir’s Budgam constituency, a seat vacated by Omar Abdullah after he became Chief Minister, took its tally of legislators to four.
PDP leaders argue that after the events of August 2019, New Delhi targeted the party and forced many of its top leaders and cabinet ministers to quit and join rival formations. From espousing the demand for a “joint mechanism”, “self-rule” and “demilitarisation” for both parts of Jammu and Kashmir to twice forging a partnership with the ideologically antithetical BJP within two years, the PDP lost its appeal among voters, even in the pockets of south Kashmir long considered its citadel.
People’s Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti addresses a press conference in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on July 28, 2026.
| Photo Credit:
By Special Arrangement
There is a strong feeling among many PDP leaders that Mehbooba Mufti often heeds “a tiny group of advisors” and “a coterie” who “mislead” her. After the BJP broke ties with the PDP in June 2018, several senior leaders, including former MLAs and cabinet ministers such as Haseeb Drabu, Imran Ansari, Mohammad Ashraf Mir, and Basharat Bukhari, quit in 2019.
Ousted from the party in 2018 on charges of “anti-party activities”, Bukhari, a former cabinet minister, first joined the National Conference (NC) and later the Sajad Lone-led PC, before returning to the PDP.
Altaf Bukhari, another former cabinet minister in the PDP-BJP coalition government, went on to form the Apni Party. Former PDP leaders such as Rafi Mir and Ashraf Mir joined the Altaf Bukhari-led camp. Suhail Bukhari, a former broadcast journalist who served as Mehbooba Mufti’s media consultant, left the party to join the Congress. Tahir Syed, another PDP spokesperson, resigned with a “heavy heart”.
Meanwhile, the war of words between the PDP and PC continues. PC president Sajad Lone accused Mehbooba Mufti and her colleagues of deflecting attention from core issues, alleging the PDP was a “creation of the agencies” in 1999-2000. “I’d request Mehbooba Mufti to offer an unconditional apology for her ‘Banta Hai ’ remark (at Jantar Mantar on July 23, Mehbooba had suggested that pellet-gun use against protesters in Kashmir was justified—‘banta hai’—because they included militants, drawing accusations that she was branding ordinary Kashmiri youth as militants. She later clarified in Srinagar that she had meant to say ‘bahana banta hai”—that security forces “get an excuse” to use force citing militancy—but had dropped the word ‘bahana’ [pretext] in the rush of back-to-back media interactions, and expressed regret for the resulting ‘incomplete statement’)”. Lone said, adding: “Mehbooba Mufti cannot deflect attention from the real issues”. He said his party’s leaders would daily demand an unconditional apology from Mehbooba Mufti over the remark.
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The PC chief further said that, unlike the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which brought in new faces in Delhi, the PDP was formed in 1999-2000 by drawing away people from the PC and other political groups.
“There are political parties in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and throughout South Asia. Only one political party, the PDP, keeps saying 24/7 that the agencies are breaking it. Because the PDP itself is a creation of the agencies, Mehbooba Mufti thinks that all parties are formed like that. Whenever anyone leaves the PDP, they think it is the handiwork of the agencies,” Lone said.
A PDP leader hit back: “What Sajad is doing is not politics. This is goondaism. It is bullying. And if we remain silent, the people of Kashmir will continue to pay the heavy price.”
Gowhar Geelani is a senior journalist and author of Kashmir: Rage and Reason.
