Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party

The Jammu & Kashmir National Panthers Party is a socialist and secular state political party in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. The party was founded on 23 March 1982 by Prof. Bhim Singh and a few prominent youth political personalities of the time including Jay Mala, former President of the Indian Students Congress. Its aim is to “demolish corruption, communalism, criminalization, drug menace” and to establish a real democracy through ultimate revolution. Panthers Party had campaigned for over three decades for the abolition of Article 370 and Article 35A, demanding that the special status of the State of Jammu and Kashmir be revoked, and for it to be fully assimilated into the Republic of India. These demands were finally met by a presidential order in August 2019 that revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s special status. Panthers Party campaigns for a further division of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, with the recognition of Hindu-majority Jammu Division as a new and separate state of India.In 2017, Ankit Love, the son of Bhim Singh and Jay Mala, announced his candidacy for Prime Minister of India for the 2019 Indian general election. He became the party’s leader on 28 May 2017. On 23 June 2021, Panthers Party President Prof. Bhim Singh was reported in the media as a potential candidate for the 2022 Indian vice presidential election, as recommended for nomination by Ankit Love, just prior to meeting Prime Minister Modi at his residence for special dialogue in regards to the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir. In 1996 the party was notable in moving the Supreme Court and the Election Commission to return the democratic process to militancy-torn Jammu and Kashmir, when elections were held again in the state after a nine years hiatus.The party formed part of the coalition government of Jammu & Kashmir along with the Congress and PDP after the 2002 Jammu & Kashmir elections, winning all seats in the Udhampur district, with Harsh Dev Singh serving as education minister in the cabinet, and Yash Paul Kundal as the minister of animal and sheep husbandry.The party is a strong proponent of secular values in Jammu & Kashmir and across the region plagued by the terrorist insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir. As a strong advocate of women’s rights the Panthers Party women’s wing works to protect women from domestic abuse in Jammu and Kashmir and female foeticide. The Women Panthers have called for a 33% reservation of seats for women in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly.Prof. Bhim Singh who is locally known as Sher-e-Jammu (Lion of Jammu) is the party’s Chief Patron and served as the Panthers Party chairman for 30 years till 2012, when his nephew Harsh Dev Singh became Chairman. Balwant Singh Mankotia has served as party’s state President since 2010.The Panthers Party has been a long-time advocate of a sovereign statehood for Palestine. It strongly condemned Israel in reaction to the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid that left nine humanitarian aid workers dead, and called on the Indian central government to support Palestinians inside and outside the UN. In 2014, Panthers Party activists burned an effigy of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at protests held in New Delhi, calling for UN intervention under Chapter VII, and terming Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide.”By December 2015, the Panthers Party’s membership drive had reached a target of 100,000 members.Panthers Party, has fielded candidates in other Indian states, including Delhi in 2015, Uttarakhand in 2012, and in 2007 contested all MLA seats in Himachal Pradesh. In 2017, Panthers Party contested elections in Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh, and reconstituted its branch in Rajasthan, headed by Ashok Bapna. Panthers Party branch in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, is led by state president Naresh Ambedkar.In 2017, Qatar’s state-funded Al Jazeera, and Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency, labelled the Panthers Party as a right-wing Hindu nationalist political party, for its billboard poster campaign, calling for an expulsion of Burmese Rohingya Muslim refugees from Jammu.