| Converting LS polls into break-India movement | | Congress, NC, PDP becoming pariah in Jammu, Ladakh | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Mar 27: Elections are considered a festival of democracy. These give the citizens an invaluable opportunity to elect governments in the state and government at the Centre of their own choice or return to the assembly and the Lok Sabha members through whom they want themselves to be resented.
Sadly, however, in Kashmir, the so-called mainstream political parties use the electoral exercises to widen the gulf between Kashmir and New Delhi and inter-regional bitterness by raking up emotive, pro-Pakistan and pro-separatist issues. They arouse religious passions across the Kashmir Valley hoping such a divisive approach would help them win elections, capture the assembly and grab Lok sabha seats.
The ongoing electoral exercise in Kashmir this time has assumed alarming proportions with parties like the NC, the PDP and the Congress indulging in competitive politics of secessionism and communalism on an unprecedented scale and holding out promises which, if fulfilled, would only endanger national security and promote separatism and Pakistani cause in the already rather separatist and terrorist-infested Kashmir Valley.
During the last two days, the NC and the PDP crossed the red line not once but umpteen times. Former speakers of the Assembly and senior NC leader, Akbar Lone, has gone to the extent of saying that "if you raise anti-Pakistan slogan once, I will raise pro-Pakistan slogan ten times". Action should have been taken against him by the party high command (in this case Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah), but it was not to be. Contrarily, Farooq Abdullah's younger brother Mustafa Kamaal defended Lone and said "Lone didn't commit any crime". Omar Abdullah also defended him, saying "he is a simple man and he speaks what is in his mind". The point is that Farooq Abdullah, Mustafa Kamaal, Omar Abdullah and Akbar Lone have been vitiating the political scene through their divisive statements and pro-Pakistan and pro-separatist statements.
So much so, on Tuesday, the NC claimed that "it is a Mujahidoon Ki Tanzeem" and also held out a categorical commitment that it will "revoke Public Safety Act (PSA), if voted to power.
If the NC raking up Pakistan and promising revocation of the PSA, the PDP is not only singing the Pakistani song but also holding out a promise that "it will remove ban on Jamaat-e-Islami, if voted to power". It was none other than the former CM and PDP president Mehbooba Mufti, who made this highly undesirable statement while addressing her party workers in Kashmir. Not just this, patron of the PDP and former Deputy CM Muzaffar Hussain Baig told the banned JeI and JKLF leadership that "it was ready to offer them legal assistance in the Supreme Court if they approached the apex court against the ban".
All this speaks for itself. As for the Congress, it is contesting LS polls in Jammu with the support of the NC and the PDP. While the Congress has entered into a seat-sharing arrangement with the NC, the PDP has offered full support to the Congress on its own. The result is that all the three parties, which are essentially Kashmir-centric and militant-friendly, are becoming unpopular in Jammu province with each passing day for obvious reasons. It's no wonder then that the voters are polarized. |
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