Talk:1987 Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly election

Post 15 February edits

I have been checking the edits you have made since 15 February and I am quite disappointed with them. For one the section called Electoral malpractice is full of WP:UNDUE content which would have been better suited under a title of Extent of electoral malpractice. There is hardly any content which informs the reader about the rigging and the ways the governments rigged the elections and all the other nasty stuff they did with votes (that is content which falls under electoral malpractice), although there is a wealth of information on the way the rigging occurred in the excellent sources you have cited. There is also the problem of too many WP:ATTRIBUTIONs when WP:YESPOV dictates that they not be used for undisputed content (see Shah case in Amira Kadal). It gets worse in that there is added WP:SYNTHESIS between (even worse) WP:SECONDARY and WP:PRIMARY sources. See this edit where you have synthesized content between a secondary source and an official election commission paper. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 22:54, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Oh boy! You broke my heart. I was so looking forward to your approval and admiration :-)

But, guess what, your "disappointment" is not grounds for deleting well-sourced and NPOV content. Your supposed objections are:

• The section should be called "extent of electoral malpractice". That is fine by me.
• The actual malpractices should be covered as well. Yes, who would dispute that?
• Problem with too many ATTRIBUTIONS? Are you joking?
• SYNTHESIS between SECONDARY and PRIMARY? What exactly? And if there was such SYNTHESIS, what is the problem with it? See WP:CALC and WP:SYNTHNOT.

I think a mass revert of a dozen-or-so edits based on spurious WP:IDONTLIKEIT reasons is quite crossing the line. Please be assured that you do not have a right to do such reverts. You need to justify that everything you have reverted has a policy-based reason for it. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:32, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

You will need to keep in mind WP:CIVILITY and focus on content rather than unleashing sarcasm.

I have re-organized the structure of your contributions to make them flow, removed the source misrepresentation and added a citation needed tag where previously there was a WP:FAKE citation for the opening line under Electoral malpractice. I have also dropped down Results under Rigging to conform with the sequence of events.

Content that has not been restored includes one WP:CHERRYPICKED and WP:UNDUE sentence. That can be resolved after the more serious first issue in my next sentence.

The other sentence which has not passed for restoration is the one whose problems I have raised in my first talkpost (which you have ignored). Unless you have a source explicitly supporting that content you are not allowed to add it back because you have mixed up material from two sources (one of them primary) to reach a conclusion not stated in either, which is WP:SYNTHESIS. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 04:17, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

I have referred your "SYNTHESIS" complaint to WP:NORN. I will respond to the other points later in the day. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:16, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, I must say you are incredibly eager to hit the revert button, but remain totally evasive in the discussion that follows. What sentence have you found a problem with? Why is it CHERRYPICKED or UNDUE? You mean to say that you have read the journal article in the fifteen minutes it took you do the revert and figured out that the sentence represented a "CHERRY"? Produce your evidence. What does the article say, and how is the sentence a "CHERRY"? You have 24 hours, failing which you will end up at WP:AE. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 21:10, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Content disputes do not go to WP:AE and there is no policy vesting a right in you of giving other editors a time frame of 24 hours to explain to you. This veiled threat has been noted and will be taken to the appropriate venue soon. RegentsPark I would like you to also note this WP:INCIVILITY.

I will deal with the WP:UNDUE sentence after, as I said, the first more serious issue is solved. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 00:22, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

JosephusOfJerusalem Just a side note here, in my view, you have been avoiding discussions at times. There is another unfinished discussion on Talk:Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus which is awaiting your justification for reinstating some content which was claimed WP:UNDUE by other editors. The page was fully protected to encourage the involved editors in a meaningful discussion but you that has not happened. It would be nice if we can take all these discussions across multiple pages (each one is independent) to their logical conclusion. Adamgerber80 (talk) 01:09, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Adamgerber80 I don't see that you have any meaningful input on either of the pages in question. Why exactly are you concerned? What is going on here that I do not know about? JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 01:16, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

JosephusOfJerusalem I was the one who requested full protection on the other page to ensure that it did not turn into the Kashmir conflict like situation and I was also the editor who requested full protection on the Kashmir conflict page. So yes I am concerned about the editing behavior currently on multiple of these pages and my note was to ensure that all these discussions are not getting WP:STONEWALL. There has also been an WP:ANI issue which was raised by some editor about people randomly showing up to revert edits and disappearing which is why I monitor these pages. Adamgerber80 (talk) 01:31, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

What I am pointing out is that you contribute neither on the main pages nor the discussions of the articles where you do reverts. It is no secret that you are one of those who have been reported at WP:ANI for ″randomly showing up to revert edits and disappearing″. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 02:02, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

JosephusOfJerusalem I sense a bit of hypocrisy here. You warn Kautilya3 of issuing warnings and that it would recorded for "behavioral issues" and then do the same thing yourself. It seems you are editing with a prejudice in mind and should be careful with your choice of words. First, I have not reverted any of the edits on this or many other pages. I could very well have given they are contentious. But the goal is to have a healthy discussion and my pointer to you was about that. If you have issues with my edits, I suggest you take it up at WP:ANI instead of throwing around random accusations with little basis. Adamgerber80 (talk) 14:13, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

I have a right to see the content I write appear on the main page. If you revert it or delete it, you need to produce policy-based reasons and explanations of how the content fits or doesn't fit those policies. Failure to do so is a conduct issue, for which you have seen other editors get blocked. You can be the next, if you so choose. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:47, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

If the content fails to abide by our policies it has no right to appear anywhere. I am warning you that your unnecessary warnings and threats are being recorded down for behavioural issues.JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 02:02, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE content about the cartel

Exactly what relevance does the 'cartel' have? How does it fit into the article? We know that this was a rigged election so even the 53% vote that the cartel got is an unreliable figure. Read Wilmalm properly...Quite apart from what has been said about the election cartel, how free and fair was polling itself, in any case? The meat of this article should be devoted to this question. The cartel is for the most part irrelevant. WP:UNDUE. The sentence is also WP:CHERRYPICKED as your contribution mainly ignores the answer to the real question, instead choosing to focus on irrelevant things which make it seem to readers that the cheating 'victors' were in the right. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 01:16, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

This article is on the election. Everything that reliable sources say about the topic will be summarised. Rigging is discussed, and was discussed in my version, in its rightful place. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:54, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

That is not a satisfactory answer to justify your WP:UNDUE sentence. You did not summarize everything that the WP:RS had to say. Your content on rigging was shamelessly non-existent. In fact I had to create the section on rigging. You paid no attention to the appropriate WP:WEIGHT for rigging. You ignored the actual meat and sidetracked the article to irrelevant subjects. What really matters first is the lack of fairness and freedom in the election, as pointed out by Wilmalm. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 02:07, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

I researched and wrote about the issue that interested me the most, viz., the extent of rigging. I haven't stopped anybody from writing other stuff, nor deleted what they wrote. That is not something anybody can say about you, by the way.

Now that I know that the extent of rigging was minor, given that the elections of Jammu and Kashmir were always rigged (including the most blatant of all: the NC winning all 75 out of 75 seats in the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly election, 1951 by disqualifying/beating up/arresting all the opposition candidates) I think the issue of rigging in this election has been blown out of proportion. You are basically trying to do that all over again here, trying to turn this article into one on rigging and shooting down all legitimate scholarly analysis of the election as UNDUE and irrelevant. This is as blatant POV pushing as any I have seen. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 02:27, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for telling us your POV that the extent of rigging was minor. You have made it easier for me to identify and detect where in your content this POV will be pushed. On Wikipedia it is the scholars' POV which matters, not yours. And no scholar says or implies that the rigging was 'minor'. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 02:31, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Scholars do say it, though not in so many words:

• It is a known fact that those elections were rigged and the MUF was not able to get its candidates elected. It was going to get only about four candidates in, but they were not allowed in.
• It was another episode of J&K’s hallowed history since 1951 of farcical elections.
• ...this atrocious episode of denial and subversion of democratic rights, processes, and institutions was no aberration: it was entirely consistent with Kashmir’s political fate in India’s democracy over the preceding forty years.
• It is an open secret amongst many observers that the people of Kashmir had witnessed a heavy dose of electoral malpractices even earlier on, especially in the 1967 and 1972 elections.
• This was far from the first case of vote-rigging; indeed, such rigging was the rule rather than the exception (see Habibullah 30-32 and Talbot and Singh 136; the discussion in Bose, Kashmir, is particularly compelling). But the scale and visibility of the corruption and the context in which it occurred made this a tipping point.

Maroof Raza also tells us why it was done: This was allegedly done at Farooq's behest, because he was desirous of maintaining an independent political majority, even without the support of the Congress(I) party. The alliance with the Congress forced Abdullah to get his majority with a smaller seat allocation. If he allowed the MUF to win four more seats, he would have lost his independent majority. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 03:31, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

References

All the scholars are saying is that this is, unsurprisingly, not the only case of electoral rigging in Kashmir. Thats an open secret. Nowhere are they saying that the rigging was 'minor'. You are not allowed to go an inch beyond the sources and add editorial interpretation. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 03:38, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

The extents of rigging was not as major, as is popularly believed to be the case. Will try to add some details. TrangaBellam (talk) 14:18, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

However, it was undoubtedly more blatant. The '67 and '71 elections were an art :) TrangaBellam (talk) 14:21, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE content

Link to edit

Kautilya3 you added back the contested content with a meretricious claim of consensus aided with your pinged friends on an unfinished discussion. I can ignore that for the meanwhile. What is pressing is that I looked through your replies to make sense of them and you said ″Besides, the MUF only contested seats in the Valley″. This has got me thinking then that there is no good reason why ″in the Valley″ should be emphasised with italics. It is WP:UNDUE. I am also thinking the same about the second half of Bose's assessment. If the MUF only contested seats in the Valley then we don't need content about statewide voted. The only reason I am reluctant for the interim to remove the second half of Bose is that it has been here for a long time and requires a different process to get binned, as opposed to the newer content. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 12:29, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

I've reverted you. The consensus in the thread at WP:NORN seems clear to me. If you want to discuss some other point relating to the information you removed - italics etc - then feel free to do so but you really need to get a handle on WP:IDHT and WP:TE, as I recently tried to explain to you on your own talk page. It looks to me as if you used the issue of undue as a means to bludgeon your view on inclusion of the vote information despite the consensus at NORN. - Sitush (talk) 14:07, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Sitush the discussion was unfinished. Consensus can change before a discussion closes. But none of thats not relevant now because a second reading has me objecting to this content for another reason. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 19:45, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

I can remove the emphasis for "in the Valley". I don't know what you mean by the "second half of Bose's assessment". Bose made a bold claim that the MUF would have won the majority of the seats in the Valley, without giving good evidence/rationale. We can't remove the view because he is a notable scholar. (If we do, somebody will come and reinsert it again.) Rather the WP:NPOV way is to state the claim as well as the problem with it. (This is not the first time or the last time that I do this kind of thing. The literature on the Kashmir conflict has loads of such bogus claims.) -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:26, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

WP:NPOV does not denote to giving scholarly and non-scholarly assessments the same validity, that is WP:FALSEBALANCE. Bose just said the MUF would have emerged as a strong opposition. The second sentence from Bose can go, about the statewide vote share for WP:UNDUE. What can be kept is his assessment on the number of Valley seats won. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 19:45, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

You are talking about the quotation in the footnote? The only rationale he provides for why he thinks it would have won "most of the constituencies" in the Valley is the vote share. You can't separate the two. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 19:55, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

I am not in favour of retaining anything about the vote share from Bose. Bose's assessment on number of seats potentially lost should be sufficient. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 20:09, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Look at the Bose text...Muslim United Front candidates won in just four constituencies, including the towns of Anantnag and Sopore, although according to the official results the opposition alliance got one-third of the statewide vote (which meant that its official vote in the Valley was much higher than one-third). ... The most likely scenario had there been a free and fair election in 1987 was that the Muslim United Front would have won most of the constituencies in the Kashmir Valley and a few in the Jammu region and emerged as a large opposition in the J&K legislature, holding at least 30 of the 76 seats.

And then look at our text...Scholar Sumantra Bose, on the other hand, believes that the MUF would have won most of the constituencies in the Kashmir Valley. The basis for this estimate appears to be that, since the MUF won a third of the officially declared vote state-wide, its vote share in the Valley would have been far higher. However, the official vote count does establish that the MUF polled 31.9% of the votes cast in the Valley.... Its WP:SYNTHESIS. Nothing in the source is saying that the basis for Bose's 30 seats estimate is based on the vote share. Its all mixed up in the main space. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 20:13, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Bose says MUF would have won 30 out of 76 seats in a fair election. The MUF won 4 seats with a 31% vote share in the Valley in a rigged election. Had the election been free and fair the vote share would have been obviously higher to support Bose's estimate of 30 seats. The 31% vote share has nothing to do with 30 seats. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 20:19, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Since Bose says that the MUF got a third of the state-wide vote, it follows by WP:CALC that it got roughly 58% of the Valley vote. That would naturally imply that the MUF would have won "most of the seats" in the Valley. The implications of Bose's (erroneous) presumption turn quite ridiculous. How could the election commission possibly declare the MUF candidates losers if they were getting somewhere around 58% of the vote? It doesn't make sense at all. Clearly Bose didn't think through what he is saying. Perhaps we should get rid of the whole Bose mention in this section. It would be utter intellectual dishonesty to keep one of these statements and omit the other. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 22:16, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

No. The election commission was inactive at the time. Electoral malpractices were widespread. Vote counts at many, maybe most, Valley constituencies were manipulated. Many votes were pre-stamped for JKNC, polling booths captured and many citizens were barred from casting votes. Opposition candidates were arrested. The entire election was farcical. So Bose is saying that without these electoral malpractices the MUF would have won most Valley seats. Nowhere in his book is he basing this estimate on the 31% vote share won with just 4 seats. That is just WP:SYNTH in the main space.

Since MUF only contested seats in the Valley, including a statewide vote share is wholly unneeded. Bose's estimate of the Valley seats MUF could have won is WP:DUE. Removing Bose is out of the question because he carries tremendous WP:WEIGHT as a leading scholar of the Kashmir conflict and WP:DUE is determined by WP:WEIGHT. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 00:58, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Remove the entire thing. I have read the relevant bit of the Bose source several times and, regardless of his academic standing, it is ambiguous and incomplete because we cannot follow his thought processes. If we don't understand it, don't mention it. If his opinion is significant then sooner or later another reliable source will refer to it and the thing can be disentangled then. - Sitush (talk) 10:02, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes we should remove the entire section. All of the estimates whether they be Schofield's, the ″anonymous intelligence″ source's or the journalists' can be binned. They are ambiguous and we can't follow any of their thought processes or verify how they reached their estimates. We can't remove Bose without the rest. That would amount to WP:CHERRY. It was a pain to have the section in the first place. All the readers need to know is that it was a farcical election and Electoral malpractices is plenty for that. JosephusOfJerusalem (talk) 11:25, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Not really. Bose is making an WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim. So we look at his rationale with a fine tooth comb. That is not the case with other writers. They are either making conservative claims or providing their rationale. I see no grounds for eliminating the section. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:38, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

References

Coming back to this issue after several years, I realize now that we have a serious problem with Bose. Bose made a mathematical error. He believed that MUF received 31% of the vote across the state (and therefore double that number within the Kashmir Valley), and so the MUF would have won the majority of the seats in the absence of rigging! That is entirely flawed. MUF won 31% of the vote in the valley and everybody knows that one needs close to 50% of the vote to have any chance of winning a seat. Bose's entire narrative is poisoned by this flawed analysis, and so he plays up the rigging as having been "massive" and the NC-Congress alliance having stolen the election and so on. It is all absurd. We have to seriously underweight Bose due to these erroneous assumptions. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 20:40, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Narratives

“We held a meeting at Ghulam Nabi Sumji’s place in Islamabad where Qazi Nisar, Geelani and we three, Malik, Ishfaq and me, were present.” Javed Mir says, "We suggested them not to take oath as lawmakers. So that we can justify rigging was done and we don’t accept results. Till date I couldn’t understand why they still took part in oath ceremony."
— https://kashmirlife.net/battleground-amira-kadal-issue-01-vol-08-100167/

We need a monograph on the '87 election or on all elections in valley and NC's shrewd ways. TrangaBellam (talk) 14:12, 12 January 2022 (UTC)