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Sumbul in Baramulla district - it is the village Kashmiris associate with counter-insurgency.
It is home to the Kashmir valley's first renegade militant (Ikhwan) Mohammed Yousuf Parrey alias Kuka Parrey.
Parrey is a man with a multi-faceted personality. In the pre-militancy days, he was known as a folk singer.
Then he jumped onto the separatist bandwagon and became a militant before doing an about turn and training his gun on separatists and militants.
His renegade militia, known as Ikhwanis, were feared and abhorred for their ruthless and extortionist ways.
In the run up to the 1996 assembly elections, Parrey formed the Jammu and Kashmir Awami League party and entered the assembly defeating the sitting National Conference candidate M Akbar Lone from Sonawari constituency, which includes Sumbul.
Parrey is in the electoral fray again. However, things have changed this time. Alleging serious human right violations by his men, people seem determined to vote him out.
"That is the only way we can get back at the Ikhwanis. They have made our lives miserable. They extort money from us and if you raise your voice, consider yourself dead," said Irshad Ahmad, a Sumbul youth.
All this is music to the ears of Parrey's rivals, one of whom is Abdul Khaliq Hanief.
Hanief, a Syed Ali Shah Geelani loyalist, dumped the separatists to join the electoral fray and was promptly expelled from the politic-religious Jamaat-e-Islaami.
He is contesting as an independent and is promising to rid the people of the scourge of Ikhwanis.
"Hanief's anti-Ikhwan stand will fetch him a decent number of votes. Besides, although he has been expelled from Jamaat, some of his former colleagues will still vote for him," said Abdul Kabir, a handicrafts dealer in Hajin village near Sumbul.
This is not a new scenario. In the 1996 parliamentary elections, people in Anantnag constituency voted in huge numbers for the Janata Dal's Maqbool Dar only to make a point to the Ikhwanis, who were presiding over a reign of terror in the district.
The main electoral battle will be between Parrey, the NC candidate and Hanief. There are three more little-known candidates in the fray.
In 1996, Parrey had defeated Lone by only 700 votes. Being an established party, the NC is in the best position to benefit from the anti-incumbency factor.
The number of electors this time is 67,767.
RELATED REPORT Militants-turned-counter-insurgents threat to J&K polls
Jammu and Kashmir Elections 2002: The complete coverage
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