When National Conference leaders walked to Aga Ruhullah Mehdi’s door in 2024 to ask him to contest the parliamentary election, they were not paying a courtesy call. 

They were making a determined effort to win him over.

Ruhullah had said no. He agreed only after the party accepted terms he set himself, then went out and won by a margin so large it stunned even his own colleagues, cutting deep into territory the PDP had held for years. 

His first speech in parliament quickly became a political moment of uncommon reach in Kashmir. 

As it circulated through social media, WhatsApp groups and public discussion, it helped him build an audience that owed more to personal credibility than party machinery.

That following became the engine of Omar Abdullah’s assembly campaign months later. 

Ruhullah was everywhere, the star performer stumping for candidates most voters had never heard speak for themselves. 

Omar, by contrast, seemed absorbed by his own contest in Ganderbal, appealing to voters to save the “Toupie hund Azath,” his skullcap, asking an entire constituency to protect........

© Kashmir Observer