PDP’s Srinagar candidate: ‘This election is not about NC and PDP… The real challenge, if they win or lose, continues to be BJP policies’

Waheed ur Rehman Para, 36, the president of the youth wing of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is the party’s candidate for the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat, which votes on May 13. He is up against the National Conference (NC)’s Aga Ruhullah Mehdi and the Apni Party’s Mohammad Ashraf Mir. In an interview withThe Indian Express, he talks about why this election is different and how it could help to break the “silence” in the Valley. Excerpts:

There has been a complete sense of suffocation over the last five-six years. There has been thought-policing and people are being questioned over small issues. The clergy is silent, the bar is silent, activists are silent, journalists are not reporting what is happening on the ground. Political parties have been selectively given space and some have been selectively erased from the political space. The PDP has been the biggest casualty in the last five years. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act has been slapped against anyone who is talking.

More than political empowerment, the first thing we need is our voice. We need to reclaim the agency to feel, to speak, to breathe freely. For us, it is an opportunity to reconnect with the people and heal them, and in the process heal ourselves because there is a lot of trauma caused by the suffocation that is prevalent due to the invisible fear.

One is to take the opportunity to reach out to the people, and second to come out of the trauma, tension, and fear first myself. There has been constant psychological pressure on me because of the detention, jail and torture. I think this is an opportunity to forget things and move on.

In my candidature, there is a message to the youth that an ordinary person can fight a parliamentary election from the