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| Sajjad Lone to Mirwaiz: Mind your own business | | ‘Kashmir issue is nobody’s monopoly’ | | AGENCIES
KUPWARA, May 10- In a virtual snub to Hurriyat Conference Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, People's Conference (PC) Chairman and candidate for Baramulla-Kupwara, Sajjad Lone, has asked the senior separatist leader to mind his own business as the Kashmir issue, according to him, was nobody’s monopoly.
Debutant election contestant and the PC founder and 41-year-old son the PC founder, Abdul Gani Lone, is engaged in hectic campaigning for the May 13th polling and the crowds drawn by him are sending shivers down the spine of the ruling National Conference and opposition PDP leaders in certain areas of Kupwara district.
Mirwaiz, who has been fighting for right to self-determination of the Kashmir people, had called Lone's move to enter the polls a wrong decision. While overruling his senior Hurriyat colleague Maulana Abbas Ansari’s no-boycott stand, Mirwaiz has asked the Kashmiris to stay away from the Lok Sabha elections and observe complete shutdown on all days of polling.
Known for his audacious behaviour in making statements and reactions, Sajjad said: "He (Mirwaiz) is entitled to his opinion. But, whether I should contest or not is none of his business." In the middle of a road show in this border town, Sajjad said: "The right or wrong of Kashmir politics is not any body's monopoly."
To a question whether his elder brother and the Mirwaiz-led Hurriyat Conference's executive member Bilal Lone had dissuaded him from joining the electoral process, Sajjad said: "He tried to dissuade me from making the decision even till the date I was to hold a press conference to announce my candidature..But I knew it has to be now or never."
Asked whether his sister Shabnam Lone, who unsuccessfully contested last year's Assembly polls, was extending any support to him, Sajjad said with a smile: "She is at least not opposing me either". In a television programme last month, Sajjad had admitted to have played a key role in engineering Shabnam’s defeat in Kupwara segment but regretfully described it as the “second top blunder of my political career”.
About his future plans, in case he loses the electoral battle, and whether he would rejoin separatist politics again, he said: "Even if I lose, I will be representing the number of votes I polled and this increases my responsibility to work more and more for people."
On how he made the shift from separatist politics to mainstream, he said: "Well, I don't think that I am either joining mainstream politics or I have ever been traditional separatist leaders. My job is to spread the Kashmiri nationalism from roads to institutions even if it is the Parliament.
"When I go out and ask for votes from people of North Kashmir, my unique campaign point is that I tell them it is high time to shift the conflict to respectable institutions as this would help in ending the sufferings of the people."
Sajjad adds with a smile that "the second best thing about me is the age. I am 41 and I may be more useful for a longer innings." He said his father's image is a big help to him.
"He was a respected politician and people even remember him with fondness." Sajjad is facing National Conference's Sahrief-ud-din Shariq and PDP's Dilwar Mir.
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