The conviction and likely imprisonment of banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chief Yasin Malik, 56, in a terror funding case, will not only keep him off-the-scene but also completes the dislodgement of the main faces of the separatist spectrum in the Kashmir Valley.
The past 30 years of Kashmir's separatist politics was dominated by three names: Tehreek-e-Hurriyat chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and JKLF chief Yasin Malik.
Hard-liner Geelani died in 2021 at the age of 91 and his parent organisation Jamaat-e-Islami, the socio-religious group believed to be his ideological springboard, was banned in 2019 and is in a complete disarray.
