Jammu and Kashmir MP Abdul Rashid Sheikh was released from Delhi’s Tihar Jail on Wednesday, a day after he was granted interim bail in a terror-funding case.

Speaking to reporters outside the prison, the 57-year-old Lok Sabha MP from Baramulla vowed to fight Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s narrative of “Naya Kashmir”.

Delhi’s Patiala House Court granted Sheikh bail till October 2 to allow him to campaign for the upcoming Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir.

Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party has 34 candidates in the poll race, reported The Indian Express.

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday released its manifesto for the elections, with Union home minister Amit Shah promising to convert Jammu and Kashmir from a “terrorist hotspot to a tourist spot”.

“I am a victim of the Bharatiya Janata Party,” said Sheikh, who is popularly known as Engineer Rashid. “I will fight against Modi’s ideology till my last breath...I am coming to Kashmir to unite my people, not to divide them.”

“I want to tell Omar [Abdullah] and Mehbooba [Mufti], my fight is for the people, I don’t want to belittle my sacrifice and stature by talking about them,” Sheikh added.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Sheikh defeated National Conference leader and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah by more than two lakh votes from Baramulla. Though he leads the Awami Ittehad Party, Sheikh had contested the general election as an independent candidate.

Responding to news of Sheikh’s release, Abdullah said: “We were aware that it would happen. I feel regret for the people of Baramulla as this bail has not been granted to serve them or attend Parliament but to fetch votes. After that, he will be taken back to Tihar and the people of north Kashmir will again be without a representative.”

Jammu and Kashmir will head to the polls in three phases on September 18, September 25 and October 1. The counting of votes will take place on October 8, alongside that of Haryana.

These will be the first Assembly elections in the region after the abrogation by the Modi government on August 5, 2019, of Article 370, which had given special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Sheikh had been in jail since August 2019 in connection with a terror-funding case filed by the National Investigation Agency. He was held under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.

The Patiala House Court had granted Sheikh custody parole for two hours so that he could take oath in Parliament on July 5. At the time, the investigative agency had informed the court that its consent for Sheikh’s custodial parole was subject to the condition that he would not speak to the media.

He had not been granted parole to campaign for the Lok Sabha elections.

On Monday, Mehbooba Mufti, the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party leader and a former chief minister, alleged that Sheikh’s party was acting as a BJP “proxy”, to snatch votes from other candidates in the fray.

Mehbooba Mufti asked how Sheikh’s party had the resources to field candidates across the Union territory.

“[PDP founder] Mufti [Mohammad Sayeed] took 50 years to form the party, we still do not have resources to field candidates everywhere,” NDTV quoted Mehbooba Mufti as saying. “Who is behind his [Sheikh’s] organisation so their candidates are fielded everywhere? From where is the funding coming?”

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