Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly election, 1983

Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly election, 1983
all 75 seats in Legislative Assembly ; 38 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	73.2% [1]
Chief Minister before election; Farooq Abdullah ; JKN	Elected Chief Minister; Farooq Abdullah ; JKN

Last updated April 10, 2019

Elections for the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir were held over October 1983.^[2]^[1] The Jammu & Kashmir National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah was appointed Chief Minister.

India, also known as the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh largest country by area and with more than 1.3 billion people, it is the second most populous country as well as the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.

Jammu and Kashmir is a state in northern India, often denoted by its acronym, J&K. It is located mostly in the Himalayan mountains, and shares borders with the states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab to the south. The Line of Control separates it from the Pakistani-administered territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan in the west and north respectively, and a Line of Actual Control separates it from the Chinese-administered territory of Aksai Chin in the east. The state has special autonomy under Article 370 of the Constitution of India.

Jammu & Kashmir National Conference Political party of India

The Jammu & Kashmir National Conference (JKNC) is a state political party in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Founded as the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference by Sheikh Abdullah and Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas in 1932 in the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, the organisation renamed itself to "National Conference" in 1939 in order to represent all the people of the state. It supported the accession of the princely state to India in 1947. Prior to that, in 1941, a group led by Ghulam Abbas broke off from the National Conference and revived the old Muslim Conference. The revived Muslim Conference supported the accession of the princely state to Pakistan and led the movement for Azad Kashmir.

Background

The 1983 Jammu and Kashmir elections cemented the political polarisation on religious lines after Indira Gandhi campaigned aggressively in the state, raising the bogey of a 'Muslim invasion' of the Jammu region, alluding to the Resettlement Bill passed by the-then National Conference government, which gave the state's residents who left for Pakistan before 1954 the right to return to the state, reclaim their properties, and resettle.^[3]

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, was an Indian politician, stateswoman and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was the first and, to date, the only female Prime Minister of India. Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. She served as Prime Minister from January 1966 to March 1977 and again from January 1980 until her assassination in October 1984, making her the second longest-serving Indian Prime Minister, after her father.

Result

Indira Gandhi's strategy yielded dividends in the 1983 state elections and the Congress won 26 seats, while the NC secured 46. Barring an odd constituency, all the victories of the Congress were in the Jammu and Ladakh regions, while National Conference swept the Kashmir Valley. The 1983 election established the model for any future Congress-NC alliance - the Congress allotting itself seats mainly in the Jammu and Ladakh regions, while the National Conference limiting itself to the Kashmir Valley.

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References

1 2 Statistical Report on General Election, 1983, The Election Commission of India.
↑ Jammu & Kashmir Assembly Election Results in 1983, Elections.in website, retrieved 27 April 2017.
↑ Poke Me: BJP mustn't play the 'Jammu card' in next month's J&K elections, The Economic Times, 30 October 2014.

Bibliography

Bose, Sumantra (2003), Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-01173-2
Guha, Ramachandra (2008), India after Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy, Pan Macmillan, ISBN 0330396110
Schofield, Victoria (2003) [First published in 2000], Kashmir in Conflict, London and New York: I. B. Taurus & Co, ISBN 1860648983
Widmalm, Sten (November 1997), "The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Jammu and Kashmir", Asian Survey, 37 (11): 1005–1030, JSTOR 2645738
Widmalm, Sten (2002), Kashmir in Comparative Perspective: Democracy and Violent Separatism in India, Psychology Press, ISBN 978-0-7007-1578-7

Sumantra Bose is a Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics. He specialises in the study of ethnic and national conflicts and their management, with a particular focus on the Indian subcontinent and the former Yugoslavia.

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[election_commission-1] 1 2 Statistical Report on General Election, 1983, The Election Commission of India.

[elections.in-2] Jammu & Kashmir Assembly Election Results in 1983, Elections.in website, retrieved 27 April 2017.

[3] Poke Me: BJP mustn't play the 'Jammu card' in next month's J&K elections, The Economic Times, 30 October 2014.

v t e Elections in Jammu and Kashmir
Legislative Assembly elections	1934 1938 1947 1951 1957 1962 1967 1972 1977 1983 1987 1996 2002 2008 2014
General elections	1951–52 1957 1962 1967 1971 1977 1980 1984 1989 1991 1996 1998 1999 2004 2009 2014