Omar Abdullah shifts the brand new silver-grey Scorpio Turbo into fifth gear. Noisy Srinagar has disappeared, the frequency-jamming car ahead is setting the pace and in cars behind there are more than a dozen guards bristling with automatic weapons. The sun-dappled, poplar-lined highway to Baramulla, from which he will veer off to address the day's three political rallies in Kupwara district, is hauntingly beautiful. The company of Rashtriya Rifles by a stretch of apple orchards near the highway, checking for landmines, belong in a picture postcard from the edge. It's a lovely day to drive.

So Omar, son of Farooq, recently crowned king of the ruling National Conference (NC) and its chief minister-in-waiting, does what any urbane young man with a punishing poll schedule, troubled inheritance, tense future and life on the line-he now ranks after Farooq on the terrorist hit list-might do to unwind. He reaches out, taps a switch on the dash and plays a tape of Buddha Bar.

RALLYING GROUND Parties like the NC are drawing crowds, as at this rally for Omar Abdullah in Kupwara town. But even a small gathering would be unsafe without security firepower.

As soothing lounge music fills the car, I tease him about how the day before, Mehbooba Mufti had complimented the "generosity of the Crown Prince who campaigns in helicopters and luxury cars". It was in response to Omar's own dig earlier, when he said he had to leave some space in newspapers for Mehbooba, archrival and leader of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) that is riding on the promise of ridding the state of the "misrule, nepotism and corruption" of the NC. Omar laughs. He's enjoying this. "She should talk," he says. "She's a political inheritor as well."

Then he gets reflective. "In Kashmir, there are four or five of us in our late 20s to mid-30s." There's Mehbooba. There's Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, a leader in the separatist Hurriyat Conference that is boycotting the polls. There are the Lone brothers, Sajjad and Billal, sons of recently assassinated Abdul Ghani Lone, whose Hurriyat-aligned but moderate People's Conference have spawned two breakaway, independent candidates. "And there's me," says Omar, "We'll be around for the next few years." Pause. "After these elections, nobody will be able to say that I haven't earned my place. It's an extremely difficult election and I'm working very hard for it."

VILLAGE VOICE Independent candidate Sofi on the trail in Handwara. He draws spontaneous, rapt crowds.

He and everybody else. On the afternoon of September 11, just five days from the first phase of polling, the state's Law Minister Mushtaq Ahmad Lone was gunned down by Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists at an election rally in Kupwara district. A little later, militants fired at a crowd in Poonch district to the south, gathered at a political rally of an independent candidate. They killed a dozen innocents, including a 12-year-old boy.

Though the administration is prepared for violence, the incidents have severely jolted the veneer of security, leading both Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani and state Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah to declare that security would be beefed up with half a million state and Central forces deployed across the state. Till the fourth and last phase of elections are held on October 8 in Jammu's terrorist-infested Doda district, the grisly, deliberate toll will continue to rise, pushed by an estimated 3,000 militants spread across Jammu and Kashmir barring Ladakh. Already, since the assembly elections were notified on August 22, about 150 people have died, almost 120 split evenly among militants and civilians, the remaining security folk.

CROWN PRINCE Omar plays it cool. The NC's chief minister- in-waiting drives himself wherever he goes. He dresses casually, speaks forcefully, promises clean governance and smoothly trashes the opposition.

This land, which ancient Chinese traveller Hsuan Tsang and medieval Kashmiri historian Kalhan raved about as heaven on earth, is now a place where just contesting elections is an act of immense bravery. It will come a close second to the crucial act of actually getting out there and voting. In 1996, the government tom-tommed a 40 per cent turnout of the state's electorate, but in places, actual turnout was reported as low as 8 per cent. This time, if 40 per cent of the state's 56 lakh voters actually vote, backed by boosted security, the Election Commission's statement of dealing sternly with incidents of rigging votes and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's pledge of "free and fair" elections, it will be regarded globally as an amazing success story.

So far, contestants have come forward for elections in hundreds. In just 15 assembly constituencies in the two first-phase districts of Kupwara and Baramulla, bordering the Line of Control (loc) with Pakistan, the hills teeming with terrorists, there are over a hundred candidates. Across the state, all major national parties have fielded candidates. There are active state behemoths like the NC that earned a majority of 57 out of 87 assembly seats in the last elections in 1996, though by Omar's own admission, anything above 40 seats this time will be a bonus. Congress punters scale it down to 35-37, predicting a NC wipe-out in Jammu. As if to pre-empt this, Omar plays direct at rallies. At a 5,000-strong meet in Kupwara town, after the customary pasting of his opponents-"those who use India's machinery and then cry for azadi" and "those who owned disco-dancing clubs in Dubai", this one aimed at Sajjad Lone-he lists out promises: district hospital, sports stadium, higher secondary school and a water-supply scheme.

BALLOT READY Doda is so rugged and dangerous that it will be the only district to go for voting on October 8-to better focus security. These village defence committee volunteers will help regular troops.

There is the three-year-old PDP of former Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. There are breakaway Independents such as the iconic Ghulam Mohiuddin Sofi, the key contestant in Handwara who recently left the People's Conference and whose popular election line, "I can have my head cut off, but I can't bow my head" draws spontaneous, cheering, rapt crowds numbering hundreds in his home village of Machipora and elsewhere, his strident speech filled with hate for the NC. There is former militant Kuka Parray who is representing the Awami League from Sonawari in Baramulla; and dozens of traders, teachers and wealthy farmers.

It is similar in the Jammu region, with the addition of pro-Hindutva parties like the Shiv Sena and a new coalition of 21 small parties and Independents, the Jammu State Morcha. The Morcha is being guided by the staunchly nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and vows to fight for statehood for the Jammu region, a part of the Union of India without the umbrella of Article 370 of India's Constitution that bestows special status on Jammu and Kashmir.

All this, because even a Kashmir in autumn has more promise of spring in one state election, and stakes big enough for entire nations. There's something in it for everybody.

BLOOD PRICE Abdul Rahman (right), a candidate from Handwara, was shot dead by militants a day after this photograph was taken

Pakistan calls it a farce and its President Pervez Musharraf says he can't stem the tide of militants from his country, which intelligence officials in Srinagar confirm is steady. ("You can't really stop it," says one. "If we kill 10, Pakistan will push in 15 so even if five die in the crossing, the strength remains constant.") For India, elections signal free will and democracy are alive and well in its dominion, a crucial play against Pakistan's claims over Jammu and Kashmir, especially the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley. For Omar, it's a chance to seal his inheritance, overcome his still halting Kashmiri and reverse nepotism in government, sloth, misappropriation and the overbearing attitude of the state's security apparatus that he freely admits is part of his inheritance.

For the Hurriyat, it's an opportunity lost. For people of Ladakh, where two independent candidates from Leh and Nubra constituencies have already been elected unopposed, it's just a matter of time before the region is by general consensus and Central legislation declared a Union territory. For those in the Jammu State Morcha, essentially a flanking manoeuvre by the BJP, it's the first step to what many feel is inevitable, whether it comes next year or a decade later: statehood for Jammu. And for Independents, many thrust forward by hopeful groups of villagers or townsfolk to voice their crushed opinion, it is a chance to be part of what should be.

It is time for a campaign pit stop. In the garden of the Showqueen Hotel and Restaurant in Handwara, Sheikh Abdul Rahman, independent candidate, sips tea. Next to him, unwinding with a hookah is Ali Mohammad Dar, the Congress' district president and Rahman's opponent-both are Sofi's rivals.

Dar is trashing the NC. "They keep switching between being with India and wanting autonomy for Kashmir." He rants on about the Ikhwani, surrendered militants who now form part of J&K Police's feared counter-terrorist Special Operations Group, and are known to lean on civilians.

Rahman takes a different route. "It would have been better to provide four lakh jobs than hold elections." If elections aren't worth it, why fight? "We have to fight for our rights. Unless people have jobs they will pick up the gun." And what of the threat to his life from the guns of fear and loathing militants are aiming at the elections? "The risk is always there."

The next day, he's dead.

Hizb-ul Mujahideen terrorists ambushed his Sumo, and as his hapless guards dropped their weapons and ran for their lives, the attackers riddled Rahman, his two nephews and his driver with bullets.

A Kashmiri will wish for you zindagi, life. He will unashamedly crow about mohabbat, love-a shikara on Srinagar's Dal Lake is christened "Hello My Sweetheart", and farm tractors adorn stickers that proclaim, "Kiss". But "miltan" still call the shots after 13 years of war. And they are doing their damnedest to destroy the elections of 2002, potentially the one that will undo the injustices of 1987 polls, widely believed to have been rigged, and that sparked the firestorm of militant hate that has so far killed 30,000, more than military casualties of independent India's wars.

Today, the terms high BP and low BP have as much to do with high or low blood pressure triggered by tension as they signify high or low levels of bulletproofing. A phrase during an election speech, or even a simple belief in the concept of polls, can result in death. "In Kashmir, we have all become demons," blazes Sajjad Lone. "All of us. We can kill with mere words." He's remembering his father. Sajjad regains composure. "Kashmir is not about making India or Pakistan happy, but about making the people of Kashmir happy. We shouldn't overestimate ourselves."

That theory will be tested over the next month. As Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, a sharecropper outside Baramulla, staring at the wake of Omar's motorcade says, "I'll vote in the name of Allah, but that day I don't know where my finger will travel, to press the button for which party." And so it shall come to pass.