Meet Sofi Yusuf, who will be BJP’s first Kashmiri Muslim lawmaker

The BJP and PDP are contesting jointly the polls for 11 seats in the upper House of the state legislature. No one has filed nomination papers against him, Sofi said.

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It is a historic moment for the BJP in Kashmir, the would-be MLC said, and credited it entirely to his party’s alliance with the PDP. “A BJP worker in Kashmir was untouchable until recently, people looked down upon us, and even my friends and relatives had tried to dissuade me from joining the party,” he said.

“The PDP and BJP combine made it possible that no other candidate filed the nomination for this reserved seat. Though our party has the support of 27 members in the Assembly, it would have been very difficult to win a seat in Kashmir merely on the BJP’s strength.”

Sofi who hails from South Kashmir’s Srigufwara village, contested Assembly elections in 2002, 2008 and 2014, and Lok Sabha polls in 2004, 2009 and 2014 on tickets of the BJP, a party he joined at a time when a majority of its members in the Valley were counter-insurgents, or linked to the pro-government Ikhwan. In 1999, Sofi took voluntarily retirement from the police, and contested his first Assembly election from Bijbehara three years later, securing 550 votes.

“In 1996, I was injured in a blast after militants targeted my house in Srigufwara,” Sofi said.

“Three years later, militants again attacked me when I was campaigning in South Kashmir,” he said, adding he had had to leave his village to ensure his family’s safety.

Sofi praised the vision of former PM Vajpayee and PDP patron Sayeed for the state. “Atalji and Mufti sahib are visionary leaders who have played an important role in the state’s development,” he said.

Sofi then said, “There will be a PDP-BJP government very shortly and our endeavour will be to provide good governance and eradicate corruption from the state,” he said.