The Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Conference presents one of the more intriguing contradictions of contemporary Kashmir politics. Its chairman, Sajad Gani Lone, is articulate, politically experienced and often forceful in raising issues in the Legislative Assembly and outside it. Yet the larger political journey of the Peoples Conference raises an unavoidable question: what exactly does the party stand for beyond the political positions articulated by its leader at a particular moment?
This question assumes importance because political credibility is built not merely by attacking one’s opponents but by maintaining consistency in one’s own political journey. In the case of the Peoples Conference, its alliances, constitutional positions and political narratives have changed considerably over time. Sajad Lone has travelled through markedly different phases of Kashmir politics—from separatist politics to participation in democratic elections, cooperation with the BJP, participation in the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration, withdrawal from that alliance, and subsequently attempts to construct another political front.
Political evolution is neither unusual nor inherently objectionable. Democracy allows leaders to reconsider earlier positions. The difficulty begins when successive changes are not connected by a sufficiently clear and consistent political philosophy.
That is perhaps the central problem confronting the Peoples Conference today.
A Party Increasingly Identified With One Leader
The Peoples Conference has increasingly become synonymous with Sajad Lone himself. He is its most recognisable face, principal strategist and dominant public voice. This gives the party visibility, but it also creates a structural weakness: political organisations need an identity larger than the personality of their leader.
The 2024 Assembly election illustrates the limits of the party’s electoral reach. Lone won Handwara with 29,812 votes against National Conference candidate Chowdry Mohammad Ramzan’s 29,150—a margin of only 662 votes.
Lone simultaneously contested Kupwara, where the result was substantially different. PDP candidate Mir Mohammad Fayaz secured 27,773 votes, National Conference candidate Nasir Aslam Wani received 17,976, while Lone finished third with 7,457 votes.
These results do not diminish Lone’s individual political importance. But they provide useful perspective when assessing claims about the Peoples Conference emerging as a major alternative political force across Kashmir.
The political challenge is therefore not merely expanding the party geographically. It is converting the visibility of Sajad Lone into a sustainable organisation with an identifiable second line of leadership and a coherent programme capable of surviving independently of its chairman’s personal interventions.
From BJP Cooperation to Post-2019 Constitutional Politics
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of Lone’s political narrative concerns his relationship with the BJP.
The Peoples Conference participated in the PDP-BJP coalition era, and Lone himself served as a minister in that government. Cooperation between parties of different ideological persuasions is entirely legitimate in a democracy. Coalition politics often requires accommodation.
But political history cannot simply disappear when circumstances change.
The same political leader who had once worked within a governmental arrangement involving the BJP subsequently emerged as a strong critic of the constitutional changes undertaken by the BJP-led Union Government in August 2019.
Again, changing one’s position is politically permissible. The question is whether the transition is adequately explained.
A voter is entitled to ask: what principle governed the earlier cooperation? What changed subsequently? Which political convictions remained constant through both phases?
Without clear answers, political evolution risks appearing less like ideological development and more like adjustment to changing circumstances.
The Gupkar Experiment — And Its Collapse
After August 2019, the Peoples Conference joined other Kashmir-based parties in the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration. The alliance brought together political organisations with substantial historical differences around opposition to the constitutional changes affecting Jammu and Kashmir.
But that political unity did not last.
Following the District Development Council elections, Lone withdrew the Peoples Conference from the alliance, citing a breach of trust between partners.
The episode is significant because it demonstrates a recurring problem in Lone’s politics: alliances are constructed around immediate political objectives but subsequently become difficult to sustain when electoral interests collide.
There is nothing inherently wrong with leaving an alliance when political confidence disappears. Yet repeated alliance formation and dissolution eventually raises a larger question about political strategy.
Is the objective to build a durable political alternative, or merely to construct temporary arrangements against whichever political adversary dominates at a particular moment?
Another Alliance, Another Fracture
The same difficulty became visible again with the creation of the People’s Alliance for Change.
In 2025, the Peoples Conference joined Hakeem Yasin’s Peoples Democratic Front and the Justice and Development Front in announcing a new political arrangement intended to provide an alternative to established political forces.
The alliance was politically interesting because its constituents came from substantially different backgrounds. Lone acknowledged ideological differences while arguing that common ground could nevertheless permit cooperation.
That proposition was reasonable.
But the durability of the experiment soon came into question.
Disagreements emerged around the Justice and Development Front and its relationship with former Jamaat-e-Islami figures. Subsequently, the JDF withdrew from the alliance amid disagreement surrounding the Budgam by-election.
Thus another political arrangement intended to represent an alternative encountered serious difficulties before it could mature into a stable political platform.
The pattern deserves examination.
The Peoples Conference joined the Gupkar alliance and left it.
It subsequently participated in another alternative political alliance, which itself encountered an early fracture.
When political formations repeatedly emerge and unravel, the problem cannot always be explained entirely by the conduct of alliance partners. At some stage, questions must also be asked about the political architecture upon which such alliances are being constructed.
Article 370 Versus Statehood
Sajad Lone has recently positioned himself as a particularly strong critic of the National Conference’s emphasis upon restoration of statehood.
He has argued that Article 370 and Article 35A cannot simply disappear from the constitutional conversation and has accused the National Conference of attempting to reduce the larger post-2019 constitutional question to statehood.
That argument deserves democratic consideration. But it also invites scrutiny of Lone’s own roadmap.
If Article 370 is the principal constitutional objective, what precisely is the realistic institutional mechanism through which the Peoples Conference proposes to restore it?
Political criticism is comparatively easy. Political alternatives require details.
What legislation does it propose?
What parliamentary strategy does it envisage?
What constitutional route does it advocate?
How does it propose to create national political support for that objective?
Without answers to these questions, Article 370 risks becoming another rhetorical instrument rather than a defined political programme.
The National Conference can legitimately be questioned about the distance between its 2024 manifesto and subsequent emphasis upon statehood. But the Peoples Conference cannot establish itself as an alternative merely by demonstrating contradictions in the National Conference.
It must explain its own constitutional strategy.
The ‘Amicable Divorce’ Narrative
Perhaps one of Lone’s most striking interventions has been his suggestion of an “amicable divorce” between Jammu and Kashmir regions.
This raises profound questions about the consistency of the Peoples Conference’s constitutional narrative.
If the political objective is restoration of the constitutional position that existed before August 2019, then what exactly is the territorial entity whose constitutional position is sought to be restored?
If Jammu and Kashmir should separate politically or administratively, how does that proposition coexist with arguments based upon restoration of the historical constitutional identity of the former state?
The two ideas are not necessarily impossible to reconcile, but reconciliation requires detailed explanation.
This is precisely where provocative political formulations can become problematic. A dramatic phrase can dominate headlines for several days. But political parties seeking governmental responsibility have to think beyond headlines.
The relationship between Jammu and Kashmir regions involves history, demography, constitutional arrangements, economic interdependence and complex political interests. It cannot easily be reduced to the language of divorce.
Opposition Cannot Become an Ideology
Sajad Lone has emerged as one of the more vocal critics of the Omar Abdullah government. He has raised issues concerning reservation, Article 370, statehood, police verification and the controversial 1987 Assembly election.
Most recently, Lone questioned regional disparities in EWS certificates. Reporting on the Assembly proceedings records his argument that approximately 92 per cent of EWS certificates had gone to Jammu and around 8 per cent to Kashmir, while other poverty indicators suggested a different regional distribution.
These are legitimate matters for legislative scrutiny.
But raising questions and building a political alternative are two different things.
The Peoples Conference cannot define itself permanently by what is wrong with the National Conference.
Being anti-NC is not an economic programme.
Criticising Omar Abdullah is not an employment policy.
Questioning statehood politics is not a constitutional roadmap.
Raising reservation concerns is not by itself a comprehensive youth policy.
A party aspiring to become an alternative government ultimately has to explain what it would actually do differently.
The Lone-Centric Political Model
The deeper difficulty may therefore lie in the highly personalised nature of the Peoples Conference.
Lone’s political interventions frequently generate attention because he is capable of framing issues sharply. But the dominance of one individual also means that each new statement can effectively become the party’s political narrative.
That creates instability.
Institutional political parties normally develop positions through manifestos, resolutions, policy documents and collective leadership. Their ideology provides continuity even when individual leaders modify rhetoric.
Where the leader and the party become virtually indistinguishable, however, every change in emphasis by the leader risks becoming a change in the perceived identity of the organisation itself.
This is why the Peoples Conference requires more than aggressive opposition politics. It requires institutional depth.
The Electoral Reality
The 2024 results also counsel political perspective.
Lone retained Handwara, but only by 662 votes. In Kupwara, where he simultaneously sought election, he finished third with 7,457 votes against the winner’s 27,773.
Those figures are factual electoral results, not a prediction about the party’s future. They nevertheless demonstrate the scale of the organisational task confronting any attempt to transform the Peoples Conference into a broad political alternative.
Media visibility and electoral penetration are not synonymous.
A politician may dominate political conversation without his organisation possessing corresponding geographical depth.
The real test for the Peoples Conference therefore lies outside television studios, press conferences and Assembly exchanges. It lies in organisational expansion, cadre development, constituency-level leadership and the ability to present voters with a recognisable political programme.
From Reaction to Proposition
Sajad Lone undoubtedly possesses political experience and the ability to raise uncomfortable questions. A competitive democracy benefits when governments face rigorous scrutiny.
But scrutiny alone cannot constitute an alternative government.
The Peoples Conference must eventually answer a simple question:
What is its positive political proposition for Jammu and Kashmir?
If it supports restoration of Article 370, it should articulate the constitutional roadmap.
If it wants statehood, it should explain where that demand stands relative to Article 370.
If it believes Jammu and Kashmir regions should reconsider their political relationship, it should explain the constitutional, economic and social consequences.
If it seeks alliances, it should articulate the ideological minimum binding those alliances together.
If it wishes to replace the traditional political parties, it must offer something more substantial than criticism of those parties.
And if it wants to become a genuinely broad political organisation, it must develop an identity extending beyond Sajad Lone himself.
The central difficulty confronting the Peoples Conference is therefore not the absence of political activity. Nor is it the absence of an articulate leader.
It is the absence of sufficient continuity between its different political phases.
From engagement with the BJP to participation in the Gupkar alliance; from leaving that alliance to constructing another; from demanding restoration of the pre-2019 constitutional arrangement to discussing an “amicable divorce” between Jammu and Kashmir; and from challenging traditional political parties to struggling to broaden its own electoral footprint—the Peoples Conference has travelled through several political narratives.
Political positions can change. Alliances can change. Strategies can change.
But a political party seeking enduring public confidence requires one element that cannot constantly change:
a clearly identifiable political compass.
Sajad Lone’s greatest political challenge, therefore, may not be defeating the National Conference, the PDP or any other opponent.
It may be convincing the electorate that beneath the changing alliances, confrontational statements and shifting political circumstances lies a consistent political project.
Until that clarity emerges, the Peoples Conference risks remaining a party with a highly visible leader and many political narratives—but without one sufficiently settled narrative defining exactly where it wants to take Jammu and Kashmir.
(Advocate Sunil Sethi is BJP J&K Chief Spokesperson, and Altaf Thakur is BJP J&K Spokesperson)
