It wasn’t without a purpose that Kashmir’s mainstream and separatist parties were on the same page, when it came to extolling Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s three-fold mantra of “Jamhooriyat, Insaniyat aur Kashmiriyat”. For years, Vajpayee’s statesmanship sustained an ecosystem in which everything “anti-Indian” passed off as “Jamhooriyat” (democracy).

The National Conference’s sustained demand for “restoration of Greater Autonomy”, that culminated in an unanimous resolution in the J&K Legislature in 1999-2000, proved to be a watershed. Vajpayee favoured the idea of creating a regional party to undercut NC’s influence so as to ensure that no Valley-based party formed the government on its own in the future.