Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir Rift Widens as Mirwaiz and PDP Take Sides
By: News Desk : 11 September 2026
Jamaat’s internal dispute is no longer staying inside Jamaat
Srinagar: An increasingly public dispute within Jammu and Kashmir’s banned Jamaat-e-Islami has now moved beyond the organisation itself, drawing in some of the Valley’s most recognisable political and religious voices.
At the centre of the controversy is a disagreement over who can legitimately claim Jamaat’s political and institutional legacy after the organisation’s emergence as a banned entity and the appearance of a separate political front that participated in the 2024 Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections.
Former Jamaat chief Ghulam Mohammad Bhat has distanced the banned organisation from the Justice and Development Front (JDF), while members associated with the JDF have rejected accusations that they are betraying or abandoning Jamaat’s ideological legacy.
The dispute has now attracted the attention of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), turning what might once have remained an internal organisational disagreement into a potentially important episode in Kashmir’s evolving political realignment.
The argument is not simply about personalities.
It involves ideology, political participation, institutional control, property, religious influence and the future direction of a constituency that was pushed outside formal politics for years.
And that is precisely why the latest Jamaat dispute deserves closer attention.
What is behind the Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir rift?
The immediate dispute centres on the relationship between the banned Jamaat-e-Islami and the Justice and Development Front, an organisation that emerged as a political platform and participated in the 2024 Assembly elections.
The JDF has been described as a political front associated with former Jamaat members and supporters. Its emergence was significant because Jamaat itself remained under a government ban, while some individuals associated with its broader ideological and social network entered electoral politics.
Former Jamaat chief Ghulam Mohammad Bhat has now publicly sought to distance the banned organisation from the JDF.
The dispute has become particularly bitter over claims concerning Jamaat properties and institutions. Bhat and his supporters have accused the JDF of occupying properties historically associated with Jamaat, many of which have been attached by authorities under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
JDF representatives, meanwhile, have rejected the suggestion that their political participation represents betrayal.
Members of the breakaway faction have accused their critics of attempting to create suspicion by describing them as “traitors” or “sellouts”. They have also defended participation in constitutional politics as a legitimate route for pursuing political objectives.
That is where the dispute becomes more consequential.
It is effectively a debate over whether Jamaat’s political inheritance should remain outside electoral politics or be carried into the constitutional democratic system through a new political vehicle.
The Justice and Development Front changed the political equation
The 2024 Assembly elections were a turning point for Kashmir’s political landscape.
For the first time in decades, individuals associated with the Jamaat milieu openly entered electoral politics through an alternative platform.
The development was closely watched because Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir has historically been far more than a conventional political party.
Founded in Kashmir in the early decades after Partition, it developed into a powerful socio-religious organisation with influence in education, religious life and political mobilisation. It was also associated historically with separatist politics and, according to government assessments, with the ideological environment surrounding militancy.
The organisation was banned by the Centre in February 2019 under the UAPA. The ban was subsequently extended, and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Tribunal upheld the declaration of Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir as an unlawful association in 2024.
Against that background, the appearance of Jamaat-linked figures in electoral politics was not an ordinary political development.
It suggested that a section of the old political network was attempting to find a new route into public life without formally reviving the banned organisation itself.
That experiment has now produced its own internal tensions.
Ghulam Mohammad Bhat’s intervention is at the heart of the dispute
Ghulam Mohammad Bhat is not a peripheral figure in this story.
He served multiple terms as Jamaat’s chief and remains closely associated with the organisation’s institutional and ideological legacy.
His recent intervention effectively draws a line between the banned Jamaat and the JDF.
According to reporting on the dispute, Bhat has objected to the JDF presenting itself as the political expression of Jamaat while simultaneously pursuing a political programme that he believes departs from the organisation’s ideological position.
One particularly revealing disagreement concerns the language used by the JDF itself.
Critics have pointed to references to socialism in the JDF’s political programme, arguing that such terminology does not fit comfortably with Jamaat’s traditional ideological framework.
For the JDF, however, the move into constitutional politics represents adaptation to changed political circumstances.
That difference is fundamental.
One side sees political participation as a possible dilution of Jamaat’s original ideological identity.
The other appears to see participation in elections as a legitimate way of pursuing political objectives under dramatically changed circumstances.
The disagreement is therefore not simply who controls Jamaat.
It is also about what Jamaat’s legacy should mean in post-2019 Kashmir.
Why Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s position matters
The involvement of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq gives the dispute a wider religious and political dimension.
The Mirwaiz is not merely another political actor in Kashmir. The office carries considerable historical religious authority, particularly in Srinagar and the Valley’s Sunni Muslim social landscape.
Mirwaiz’s political history has also intersected with Jamaat’s over the decades, although the two represent distinct institutional traditions.
The Jamaat’s political influence historically grew alongside, and sometimes in competition with, older religious and political institutions associated with the Mirwaiz.
That history makes his current intervention particularly significant.
Rather than treating the Jamaat dispute as an obscure organisational disagreement, Mirwaiz’s position effectively gives one side additional religious and political legitimacy.
Recent reporting indicates that Mirwaiz has backed former Jamaat chief Ghulam Mohammad Bhat in the dispute over Jamaat’s identity and institutional legacy.
That does not mean the Mirwaiz has simply adopted Jamaat’s political programme.
The distinction is important.
His intervention is better understood as an assertion of religious and institutional authority in a rapidly changing political environment.
PDP’s involvement adds an electoral dimension
The People’s Democratic Party’s interest in the controversy is equally significant.
Mehbooba Mufti and the PDP have historically maintained a political constituency that overlaps with sections of Kashmir’s religious and separatist-leaning electorate.
The party’s relationship with Jamaat has also historical precedents.
In 2019, when the Centre banned Jamaat-e-Islami, Mehbooba Mufti publicly criticised the crackdown and said that the BJP had previously wanted to take action against Jamaat and Hurriyat leaders while she was chief minister.
PDP workers also protested the Jamaat ban at the time, calling for its withdrawal.
So the PDP’s engagement with the current dispute is not entirely new.
What has changed is the political environment.
The PDP is now competing in a Kashmir where the old boundaries between separatist politics, mainstream politics and religious activism have become considerably less rigid.
The 2024 elections demonstrated this clearly.
Several figures from the broader separatist ecosystem entered electoral politics. Syed Salim Gilani, associated with the Mirwaiz-led Hurriyat, joined the PDP ahead of the Assembly elections.
The Jamaat-linked electoral experiment was another part of the same larger transformation.
The real contest may be over Jamaat’s future, not its past
The most important question emerging from the dispute is deceptively simple:
What happens to Jamaat’s political influence when Jamaat itself cannot operate as a legal political organisation?
There are several possible answers.
One is continued distance from electoral politics, with the organisation retaining its ideological and religious identity outside formal party competition.
Another is political adaptation through a separate platform such as the JDF.
A third possibility is gradual fragmentation, with different sections of the old Jamaat network aligning with different mainstream political parties.
The current dispute suggests that all three tendencies may now be competing simultaneously.
That is why the factional disagreement matters.
If Jamaat’s social influence remains significant but its organisational structure remains legally restricted, its political constituency becomes attractive to mainstream parties.
And that brings the NC, PDP and other political formations into the equation.
A battle over properties has made the dispute more concrete
Ideological differences are one thing.
Property disputes are another.
According to reports, Jamaat properties have become an important part of the current confrontation. Former Jamaat leadership has accused the JDF side of occupying or asserting control over properties historically associated with the organisation, while many such properties have already been attached by government agencies under UAPA-related proceedings.
This transforms an ideological disagreement into a practical institutional battle.
Who controls buildings?
Who controls educational or religious institutions?
Who can represent Jamaat’s former membership?
Who speaks for its social network?
And perhaps most importantly, who has the authority to decide what happens to Jamaat’s legacy in a political environment where the original organisation remains banned?
These questions could prove harder to settle than political slogans.
Jamaat’s history explains why the stakes are so high
Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir has had a complicated relationship with electoral politics.
Unlike Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, the Kashmir organisation developed a distinctly political position on the Kashmir dispute and historically supported a different constitutional future for the region.
It also participated in electoral politics before the outbreak of armed militancy, but later became associated with separatist politics.
The organisation’s ideological ecosystem was also historically linked to Hizbul Mujahideen, which emerged as an armed group associated with the Jamaat network. The government has repeatedly cited these links in its case against the organisation.
The organisation was banned in 2019 amid a wider crackdown on separatist and militant-linked networks.
That history explains why the current political transformation is so closely watched.
The question is not simply whether former Jamaat members can contest elections.
It is whether an ideological movement that once stood outside India’s electoral framework can reinvent itself within constitutional politics without losing the identity that gave it influence in the first place.
The post-2019 political environment has changed the rules
The political environment of Kashmir today is very different from the one in which Jamaat built its strongest influence.
The Article 370 changes, the reorganisation of the former state, the restoration of electoral politics and the weakening of the traditional separatist leadership have all altered the political landscape.
The 2024 Assembly elections were particularly important.
The elections saw significant participation across the Valley, including candidates and political actors with backgrounds previously associated with separatist politics. The Indian Express noted that Jamaat, through a faction, returned to the electoral arena for the first time since 1987 through candidates aligned with the changed political circumstances.
That development created a new political possibility.
But it also created a new dilemma.
Can an organisation retain its ideological distinctiveness while entering a political system whose constitutional premises it historically challenged?
The JDF experiment appears to be an attempt to answer that question.
The current rift shows how difficult that answer may be.
Mirwaiz’s involvement signals a wider religious realignment
Mirwaiz’s support for Bhat also needs to be read against his own changing political position.
After years of restrictions, Mirwaiz returned to public religious life and resumed Friday sermons at Srinagar’s historic Jamia Masjid in 2024.
His return coincided with a broader debate about whether sections of Kashmir’s previously excluded political and religious leadership could gradually re-enter public life.
The question has never been simply electoral.
It is also about who gets to represent Kashmiri Muslim public opinion.
For decades, different institutions competed for that space: mainstream parties, separatist organisations, religious bodies and influential clerics.
Jamaat was one of the most important players in that ecosystem.
Mirwaiz’s intervention in the current Jamaat dispute therefore carries a message beyond the immediate controversy.
It potentially reinforces the idea that traditional religious authority remains relevant even as electoral politics becomes increasingly dominant.
PDP sees a constituency that cannot simply be ignored
For the PDP, the Jamaat-linked constituency represents a complicated but potentially important political space.
The party has long attempted to position itself as a bridge between Kashmiri political sentiment and participation in India’s electoral system.
Its political vocabulary has traditionally been more accommodating of separatist sentiment than that of the National Conference, while remaining firmly within electoral politics.
The Jamaat dispute offers the PDP another opportunity to engage with voters and networks that may not naturally identify with the mainstream political establishment.
But there is a risk.
If Jamaat’s influence is overstated, political parties could misread the electorate.
The 2024 elections showed that Kashmir’s voters are capable of supporting mainstream parties, independent candidates and newer political formations for very different reasons.
Religious affiliation does not automatically translate into electoral loyalty.
Could the rift benefit the National Conference?
The National Conference is another obvious beneficiary if Jamaat’s political network fragments.
The NC remains the Valley’s strongest mainstream political organisation in terms of electoral reach and historical political infrastructure.
Some sections of Jamaat’s social constituency could find the NC attractive, particularly if the organisation’s internal divisions make a unified political strategy impossible.
But the NC also faces a limitation.
Its government has to operate within the post-2019 constitutional framework, something that remains uncomfortable for sections of the old separatist and Jamaat constituency.
The party’s politics of restoration of statehood and Article 370 may appeal to some, but its responsibilities as the governing party can make it harder to absorb constituencies looking for a more uncompromising ideological position.
The PDP therefore has an opportunity—but so does the NC.
This is also a test for Jamaat itself
For Jamaat, the biggest danger may not be the dispute with the JDF.
It may be fragmentation of its broader social influence.
If different groups begin claiming ownership of Jamaat’s legacy, supporters could gradually divide between:
- those who favour maintaining the traditional ideological line;
- those who favour constitutional electoral politics;
- those who prefer engagement with mainstream parties;
- and those who want religious influence without direct political participation.
Once such divisions become entrenched, rebuilding a unified organisational structure becomes extremely difficult.
History provides plenty of examples of political movements losing influence not because their ideas disappear, but because their organisational machinery fragments.
A new Kashmir political equation is taking shape
The current Jamaat dispute reflects a much larger transition underway in Jammu and Kashmir.
The old political categories are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
Former separatists are entering elections.
Mainstream parties are reaching out to constituencies once considered outside their political orbit.
Religious leaders are reasserting public influence.
And organisations that once rejected electoral politics are experimenting with constitutional participation.
The result is a political landscape in which ideology, religion and electoral pragmatism increasingly overlap.
That is precisely what makes the Jamaat rift important.
It is not occurring in a political vacuum.
What the dispute could mean ahead of future elections
If the disagreement continues, its electoral consequences could become visible well before the next Assembly election.
A fragmented Jamaat constituency could produce several outcomes.
Some voters may gravitate toward the PDP, particularly where the party has successfully positioned itself as sympathetic to Kashmir’s political grievances.
Others may return to the National Conference, especially where candidates have stronger local organisational networks.
Some could support independent or Jamaat-linked candidates.
And some may simply withdraw from electoral politics altogether.
The last possibility is often overlooked.
Political organisations can influence elections only when their supporters actually participate.
If factional disputes create confusion over leadership and representation, the result may be political disengagement rather than consolidation behind any one party.
The bigger question: can Kashmir’s old political networks reinvent themselves?
The Jamaat controversy ultimately raises a question that extends far beyond one organisation.
What happens to political movements when the political system around them changes?
Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir was shaped by a political environment that no longer exists in the same form.
The separatist leadership has been weakened.
The constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir has changed.
Electoral politics has returned.
The younger generation has different economic and political concerns.
And the space once occupied by a handful of dominant organisations is now contested by multiple parties, independent politicians, religious figures and new political formations.
The Jamaat rift is therefore partly about the past.
But its consequences will be determined by the future.
From internal dispute to Valley-wide political question
For years, Jamaat-e-Islami represented one of the most organised ideological currents in Kashmir.
Today, its influence is being tested in a completely different environment.
The emergence of the JDF demonstrated that parts of its political ecosystem were prepared to enter electoral politics.
Ghulam Mohammad Bhat’s rejection of the JDF’s claim to Jamaat’s legacy has exposed deep disagreements over that transition.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s intervention has brought religious authority into the argument.
The PDP’s involvement has given it an unmistakable electoral dimension.
And the property dispute has turned the confrontation into an institutional battle as well.
That combination makes the current episode considerably more important than a routine factional disagreement.
The central question now is not merely who controls Jamaat.
It is who will inherit its social and political influence—and what form that influence will take in the new Jammu and Kashmir.
For the Valley’s mainstream parties, that is a constituency too significant to ignore.
For Jamaat’s competing factions, it is a struggle over identity and legitimacy.
And for Kashmir’s wider political landscape, it is another indication that the old boundaries between religious authority, separatist politics and electoral democracy are continuing to shift.
