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| Abdullahs, Muftis shown their place | | After Governor, CS says civic polls will be held | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Sept 11: The Governor's administration in Jammu & Kashmir has rejected out of hand the oft-repeated suggestion and demand of the out-on-the-limb Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti that if the state Government wanted the NC and the PDP to participate in the upcoming panchayat and Urban Local Bodies' elections, it and the Union Government have to reassure the people of Kashmir that they would not do anything to dilute Article 35-A or undermine the state's special status. Both the parties during the past few days threatened a number of times the powers-that-be in the state and at the Centre that they will boycott the scheduled polls.
Farooq Abdullah announced poll boycott last week and declared that the NC will not only boycott the panchayat and ULB elections, but also parliamentary and assembly elections in case the authorities failed to address their concerns with regard to the state's special status. The PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti announced the poll boycott on Monday after she failed to extract an assurance from the Governor, Satya Pal Malik, that the state government and the union government would desist from tinkering with Article 35-A. She, like Farooq Abdullah, questioned the linking of the panchayat and ULB polls with law and order problem and expressed the view that the authorities could tinker with Article 35-A after the election process was over.
The NC and the PDP had hoped that their politics of blackmail would click and the authorities would yield, notwithstanding the fact that the whole case was sub-judice and the apex court was to hear the PILs against 35-A on January 19, 2019. (Internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus observe January 19 as "holocaust Day". It was on this day in 1990 that the Hindus quit Kashmir wholesale to become refugees in their own motherland.) But much to their chagrin, neither the Union Government nor the Governor's administration knelt. Instead, they adopted a tough stand and made it absolutely clear that the poll process will be completed, come what may, and those who would try to disrupt it will be brought to justice.
So much so, Governor Satya Pal Malik said that "Article 35-A will have no bearing on the panchayat and ULB elections and the election process be will be completed". Not only this, he reportedly said that "the NC and the PDP should fight the case in the Supreme Court" and "Article 35A controversy will not be allowed to come in the way". It was a sort of rebuff.
The fact of the matter is that the Abdullahs and Mufti have lost the game as the authorities are not in a mood to oblige those who all through played politics of blackmail and threats to weaken the institution of Indian State in Kashmir. That the authorities have started acting and talking tough augurs well for the state and its people. |
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