The Peoples Democratic Party entered the political landscape of Jammu and Kashmir with the promise of providing an alternative political narrative. It projected itself as a party capable of challenging the traditional dominance of the National Conference and claimed to represent a softer, more responsive and people-oriented politics. Over the years, however, the PDP has increasingly transformed itself from a party seeking to shape political events into one perpetually complaining about them. Its political vocabulary today appears dominated by grievance, victimhood and accusations against almost every other political force. In that sense, the PDP increasingly resembles the “cry baby” of Kashmir politics—a party that finds reasons to complain about developments but struggles to offer a convincing political roadmap of its own.

The PDP was created in 1999 under the leadership of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and quickly occupied an important space in Kashmir politics. It challenged the National Conference at a time when the latter had long dominated the Valley's electoral landscape. Its promise of a “healing touch” appealed to sections of society looking for an alternative. After the 2002 Assembly elections, the PDP became part of the coalition government with Congress, and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed became Chief Minister under a rotational arrangement. The party had arrived as a serious political force.The difficulty for the PDP has been reconciling its rhetoric with its record in government. While in opposition, it frequently adopted an aggressive posture against those exercising power. Once in government, however, it was itself required to function within the same constitutional and administrative system it had criticised. This contradiction became particularly visible after the 2014 Assembly elections.

The PDP had fought the 2014 election largely by presenting itself as a political barrier against the BJP's expansion into Jammu and Kashmir. Yet, after the election produced a fractured mandate, the PDP entered into an alliance with the BJP and formed the government. The alliance may have been justified at the time as an attempt to reconcile the electoral mandates of Jammu and Kashmir, but politically it exposed the enormous distance between the PDP's electoral rhetoric and its willingness to exercise power with the very party it had opposed.

The BJP's ideological position was hardly a secret. Its views on Article 370, nationalism and the constitutional integration of Jammu and Kashmir had been publicly articulated for decades. The PDP nevertheless chose to share governmental responsibility with it. That historical fact makes some of the PDP's later political rhetoric difficult to separate from its own record.

The death of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in January 2016........

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