The simmering differences within the National Conference (NC) between its Srinagar MP, Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi, and the party leadership have now entered an unprecedented phase. Following a public challenge from NC president Farooq Abdullah, Ruhullah has announced that he will resign not only from the party but also from his Lok Sabha membership. He has stated that he will formally submit his resignation on November 3, the 26th death anniversary of his father, Aga Syed Mehdi, who was killed by militants in 2000. The announcement transforms what had until now been an increasingly visible intra-party disagreement into an open political confrontation.Farooq Abdullah’s challenge was itself unusually direct. In response to Ruhullah’s continued public criticism of the NC leadership, particularly chief minister Omar Abdullah, Farooq Abdullah argued that Ruhullah’s political standing had been built through the NC and its organisational support and if Ruhullah believed that his political standing was independent of the party, he should leave the NC, resign from his Lok Sabha membership and seek a fresh mandate from the electorate without the party’s support. In effect, Farooq Abdullah converted an argument about party discipline into an electoral test of political legitimacy by posing the question – whether the massive mandate that Ruhullah got during the 2024 parliamentary election was his personal mandate or an NC mandate?Ruhullah has now accepted that challenge. In doing so, he has taken an unusual and potentially consequential step. Dissent within the NC is not unprecedented in its long history, but the present episode is unusual in the post-2019 period because a sitting NC MP not merely disagreed with the party leadership internally, he has repeatedly and publicly challenged the political line of his own party, criticised the chief minister and participated in protests against the government led by his own party. His proposed resignation therefore has significance beyond the fate of one MP. It raises questions about the ideological direction of the NC, the ownership of its electoral mandate and, ultimately, the political future of the party itself.The origins of the confrontationThe differences between Ruhullah and the Omar Abdullah-led government became publicly visible within months of the formation of the NC government following the 2024 assembly elections. One of the earliest and most striking instances was Ruhullah’s intervention on the reservation issue.The protest outside the residence of Omar Abdullah, led by NC MP Ruhullah Mehdi, demanding quota reforms. Photo: Ubaid Mukhtar.In December 2024, he led a protest outside Omar Abdullah’s residence in Srinagar, demanding rationalisation of the reservation policy. The demand had come against the backdrop of a steep increase in the overall reservation quota, largely following the extension of Scheduled Tribe status to new categories. Importantly, this increase had taken place before the formation of Omar Abdullah’s government. The protest was nevertheless significant because it was an unusual instance of a NC parliamentarian publicly protesting against his own government and sharing the platform with opposition leaders. Prominent opposition figures, including Waheed-ur-Rehman Para and Iltija Mufti of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Sheikh Khursheed of the Awami Ittehad Party, were also present.The reservation controversy, however, was only the beginning. What increasingly set Ruhullah against Omar Abdullah was not merely his criticism of individual government policies, but his interpretation of the mandate received by the NCe in the 2024 assembly election. Ruhullah’s central argument has been that the NC did not merely receive a mandate to form a government, it received a political mandate to seek the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s constitutional position as it existed before August 5, 2019. In his reading, restoration of Article 370 and its associated constitutional guarantees lay at the heart of that mandate. The government’s subsequent emphasis on restoration of statehood, therefore, appeared to him as a narrowing of the agenda for which the electorate had voted. Ruhullah has pointed to the NC’s 2024 manifesto, which explicitly promised to strive for the restoration of Article 370, Article 35A and statehood, while also pursuing implementation of the 2000 Autonomy Resolution.Article 370 versus statehood?The emerging difference within the NC is not as much over its stated commitment to restoring Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status, but over how that restoration should be understood and prioritised. This distinction is significant because August 5, 2019 brought about two distinct but interconnected changes: the effective removal of Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional position under Article 370 and the reorganisation of the erstwhile state into two Union Territories, ending its status as a state. The NC’s 2024 electoral agenda addressed both dimensions, promising to strive for the restoration of Article 370 and 35A and implementation of the autonomy resolution, while also demanding restoration of statehood. The difference between Omar Abdullah and Ruhullah has become particularly pronounced over which of these objectives should receive political priority.Also read: Once the NC’s Chief Spokesperson, Why Srinagar MP Aga Ruhullah is All Set to Quit the PartyWhile Ruhullah has continued to foreground Article 370, Omar Abdullah has increasingly emphasised restoration of statehood. Adopting a resolution in favour of ‘restoration of statehood’ was the first task taken up by his cabinet. Though later a resolution was passed by the state legislature emphasising ‘the special status and constitutional guarantees which protect the identity, culture and rights of the people of J&K’, the continued demand projected on behalf of the state government has been in relation to restoration of the statehood. In his various speeches addressed to the Central government, Omar Abdullah has been persistently demanding the statehood and more recently, in July this year, he even held a protest of his party in Delhi around this issue. Ruhullah’s criticism is that the increasing emphasis on statehood risks displacing the larger constitutional question. The NC, he argues, sought the mandate in 2024 on the explicit promise of restoring the constitutional position and autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir. To subsequently foreground the demand for restoration of statehood is therefore to shift the political focus away from the changes introduced in August 2019. In his view, this risks normalising the post-2019 constitutional order rather than continuing to contest it. Statehood, in this reading, is not irrelevant, but becomes secondary to the restoration of the constitutional framework that existed before August 2019. This is also the basis of his increasingly sharp criticism of Omar Abdullah, including his charge that an overwhelming focus on statehood brings the NC closer to the political position of the BJP. Omar’s positionOmar Abdullah’s position rests on a different assessment of political possibility and institutional priorities. He has maintained that the NC has not abandoned its commitment to Article 370 or to the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s earlier constitutional position. His argument, however, is that such restoration is not presently achievable under a BJP-led Union government, particularly when the BJP itself has abrogated the special constitutional status of J&K and remains committed to the post-2019 constitutional arrangement. In these circumstances, he advocates political patience, arguing that it took the BJP decades to realise its ideological objective of removing Article 370; the NC, too, may have to wait for a political configuration in which its restoration becomes possible. Statehood, by contrast, is seen as an immediate and politically attainable objective. The emphasis on statehood is therefore presented not as an abandonment of the larger constitutional demand, but as a recognition of the political constraints within which the NC must operate.In the circumstances in which Omar Abdullah leads his government, his immediate concern is the institutional constraints imposed by Jammu and Kashmir’s altered political structure. As the chief minister of a Union Territory, he operates within a fragmented distribution of authority, with significant powers vested in the lieutenant governor and the Union government, particularly the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), retaining considerable influence over administration and political decision-making. He has repeatedly contrasted these constraints with his earlier tenure as chief minister of the erstwhile state (2009-2014), when the elected government functioned within a substantially different constitutional and institutional framework.This institutional constraint also informs Omar’s argument for prioritising statehood over the immediate restoration of Article 370. In his formulation, statehood is not merely a more attainable political demand; it is a necessary institutional precondition for pursuing a broader claim to autonomy. A state provides an elected government with a substantially greater sphere of political and administrative authority than a Union Territory. Restoring statehood would therefore recover not simply a status lost in 2019, but also the institutional capacity through which questions of political autonomy could subsequently be pursued. The two demands, in this reading, are not mutually exclusive; what is consequential is the order in which they are pursued.Given the BJP-led Union government’s continuing commitment to the post-2019 constitutional framework, Omar Abdullah appears to regard an immediate confrontation with the Union government over Article 370 as unlikely to yield a change in the existing arrangement. Statehood, by contrast, represents an objective that is both politically more attainable and directly relevant to the functioning of his government. This calculation has also encouraged an emphasis on maintaining a workable relationship with the Union government.Also read: At Jantar Mantar, Omar Abdullah Tells Centre, ‘Restore J&K Statehood or Openly Say No’Such an approach is reinforced by the structural dependence of Jammu and Kashmir on the Union government, not only for significant areas of administrative authority but also for financial support. In such a situation of dependence of J&K on the Centre, where it needs to continuously negotiate with the Centre, inherent tensions due to political assertion around the demand for restoration of autonomy would go against the practical requirements of governance.Omar Abdullah’s position, therefore, is pragmatic, better understood not simply as an accommodation with the post-2019 order, but as an attempt to distinguish between the NC’s long-term constitutional objective and what can realistically be recovered within the present political configuration. Statehood occupies the intersection of these two considerations: it challenges the consequences of the 2019 reorganisation while remaining a demand that can be pursued without requiring an immediate reversal of the entire post-2019 constitutional framework. For him, consequently, statehood represents more than an administrative correction; it is the recovery of political authority and the institutional ground from which the larger question of autonomy may eventually be pursued. Omar’s pragmatismOmar Abdullah’s pragmatic approach to politics predates his tenure as chief minister. It emerged in response to the NC’s existential crisis after August 2019, when the abrogation of J&K’s special constitutional status rendered the party’s traditional autonomy politics increasingly difficult to sustain within the new constitutional order.Autonomy had long provided Kashmir’s mainstream political parties, particularly the NC, with a political language for articulating J&K’s distinctiveness and claiming to defend its political identity. For the NC, however, autonomy was more than an ideological commitment; it was also a political resource that helped sustain its legitimacy among the Kashmiri constituency by allowing the party to redefine its political position at critical junctures and reconnect emotionally with its electorate. In 1975, Sheikh Abdullah invoked constitutional autonomy and the restoration of the pre-1953 constitutional position to provide a political vocabulary for moving away from ‘plebiscite politics’ and returning to constitutional and power politics through the Indira-Sheikh Accord. Under Farooq Abdullah, ‘Greater Autonomy’ assumed renewed importance, first as a means of legitimising his succession after Sheikh Abdullah’s death and later, amid militancy and separatism in the 1990s, as a mainstream political alternative to separatism. This trajectory culminated in the 2000 Autonomy Resolution, which sought restoration of autonomy in its ‘pristine’ form. Although the Vajpayee government rejected the resolution, autonomy remained deeply embedded in the NC’s political narrative and continued to underpin its claim to represent Kashmiri political aspirations.The abrogation of Article 370 therefore did more than remove the institutional basis of autonomy politics; it disrupted the political vocabulary through which the NC had historically defined its identity and legitimacy. The party was consequently confronted with a fundamental question: how could it remain politically relevant when the constitutional framework around which much of its politics had been organised had itself been dismantled? This crisis was compounded by the Union government’s narrative that held the traditional mainstream parties, particularly the NC and PDP, responsible for Kashmir’s political predicament and sought to portray them as irrelevant in the post-2019 scenario.The immediate NC response was the formation of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) under Farooq Abdullah. It brought otherwise competing parties together around the common objective of resisting and seeking reversal of the post-2019 constitutional changes. The PAGD thus represented a politics of collective resistance, but this logic sat uneasily with the NC’s longer-term electoral ambitions. Once competitive politics resumed, the constituent parties inevitably had to reconcile collective opposition with their competition for the same electorate.The 2020 District Development Council (DDC) elections brought this tension into sharper focus. Contested under the PAGD banner, this election demonstrated the NC’s organisational resilience and its electoral advantage over the PDP. The result strengthened the case for the NC to rely on its own organisational base rather than remain within a coalition primarily oriented towards resistance. It was in this context that Omar Abdullah increasingly steered the party towards a pragmatic political strategy. Shifting from Farooq Abdullah’s idea of resistance politics of the PAGD, he steered the party towards institutional politics and institutional arrangement. The shift was not simply generational but methodological. Rather than making collective resistance the principal vehicle of politics, Omar increasingly focused on objectives achievable within the altered constitutional framework. The NC chose not to boycott subsequent elections, engaged with the delimitation process despite its objections, participated actively in electoral politics and gradually disengaged from the PAGD. In effect, it sought to function once again primarily as an electoral organisation rather than as a vehicle of post-2019 resistance.This did not amount to a formal abandonment of the NC’s earlier ideological position. Restoration of Article 370 remained part of its stated political agenda, but it ceased to operate as the organising principle of its immediate political strategy. The emphasis shifted towards what could be pursued within the existing order: electoral mobilisation, government formation and, above all, the restoration of statehood.Future questionsThe internal rift within the NC, one can see, goes beyond the personalities of Ruhullah and Omar Abdullah. It reflects a deeper and more enduring challenge confronting the party in the political environment created after 2019: how to reconcile its historical ideological inheritance with the demands of competitive electoral politics under a fundamentally altered constitutional order. The disagreement over autonomy, statehood and the manner in which the party should pursue its political objectives is, at one level, a disagreement over political strategy; at another, it raises the larger question of what kind of political organisation the NC seeks to be in the post-2019 period. While Omar Abdullah’s approach has increasingly emphasised electoral competition, institutional engagement and achievable political objectives, Ruhullah’s intervention seeks to keep the question of the larger constitutional identity of Kashmir more centrally located within the party’s politics. The tension between these approaches may therefore persist even beyond the present dispute between the two leaders.The critical question now is whether Ruhullah’s ideological appeal can translate into an independent political base. His proposed resignation and re-election would provide the clearest possible test of this proposition by shifting the dispute from the internal arena of the party to the electorate. A convincing victory would strengthen his claim that his political appeal extends beyond the NC organisation and that the constitutional question retains electoral resonance. A defeat, conversely, would reinforce the NC’s argument that his electoral strength was inseparable from the party’s symbol, organisation and established political base. A closely contested result could be even more consequential, leaving the question of political legitimacy unresolved while potentially deepening factional divisions. Whatever the outcome, the episode has already brought to the surface a fundamental question for the NC: whether it can accommodate a strong ideological constituency within an increasingly electoral and pragmatic political strategy, or whether the two are likely to remain sources of continuing internal tension.Rekha Chowdhary was formerly a professor of Political Science at the University of Jammu.