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| Dialogue should not wait for separatists | | | | Reacting to the elections results of upcoming Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly, the Congress president Sonia Gandhi rightly pointed out that who forms next government is immaterial. True, elections in Jammu and Kashmir –after 1987 –have always been about voter turnout and nothing else. While the government formation is till hanging in balance, there is a quick credit taking on who enhanced the polling percentage. Well, what triggered the massive popular participation in the Assembly polls, with voter turnout in the Valley exceeding the wildest hopes of optimists, is likely to be a subject of discussion. But four considerations are beyond dispute, and cannot be overlooked: that these elections were squeaky clean and were the freest and fairest ever held in the state, including in its historically-troubled Valley segment; that the spectacular and unprecedented voter turnout mocked the secessionists as it was in defiance of the boycott campaign of the separatist outfits; that the high turnout was uniform across districts and showed significant blurring of the much-touted urban-rural divide which had been a characteristic of the 2002 state election (when prominent Valley towns had registered no higher than single-digit voter participation); and that the electoral exercise was conducted by the Election Commission of India and not the United Nations or any other external agency. Secessionist leaders, most notably the Mirwaiz, have chosen denial mode and sought to suggest that the election was not a substitute for a resolution of the so-called Kashmir issue, but showed only that the Muslims of Kashmir wanted to bring a government into existence that would look after routine administration and cater to their development needs even as they continued to live under "Indian occupation". If such was the case, there was no need for the separatists to have issued their boycott call. The plain fact is that after the reasonably successful election of 2002, the secessionists feared that a repeat this time around would rob them of even the marginal legitimacy they have, and had therefore to contrive an argument to explain their utter disregard by the voter. Given the nature of the result, the separatists would need to contend with the fact that no viable government can be formed without a major "Indian" party stepping into a coalition arrangement with a key Valley party. A question to answer is: would the Hurriyat bosses have proffered their present justification of the impressive voter participation if their boycott message had carried the day? The Hurriyat must also address a bigger question: why does the voter hold them in such poor esteem although it went along with them in the agitation on the Amarnath issue only two months ago? With his customary frankness and acute sense of politics, Syed Ali Shah Geelani has noted that people voted in such a big way because in 2008 there was no fear of the gun and that the gun is a legitimate component of the Muslim Kashmiri’s "freedom struggle". Which means that the Centre should be prepared for the stepping up of terrorist acts, particularly by infiltrating foreigners since domestic terrorism in the Valley has been at a low ebb for some time. The election result also makes amply clear that waiting on the Hurriyat Conference, in a bid to bring about its participation in productive discussions on issues within the bounds of the Constitution, was a misdirected effort by at governments at New Delhi. The dialogue should not wait for separatists. |
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