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| Will people respond to Geelani's civic poll boycott call ? | | | Though the poll schedule for the civic body elections in Jammu and Kashmir is yet to be announced a senior separatist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, has given a call to people to boycott these elections. True to his salt Geelani has not wasted any time while urging people to stay away from the civic elections. He and his other colleagues in the separatist camps have been usually heard giving calls to people to boycott the elections,whether they be the Assembly polls, the Lok Sabha election, the Panchayat elections or that of the civic elections. By trying to secure peoples' cooperation by ensuring that the state of Jammu and Kashmir witnessed very poor polling these separatists want to demonstrate to the world that people in the troubled state were not for any democratic process but were in favour of settlement of the Kashmir issue. These separatists have been playing this game since 1989 during the Lok Sabha elections. They repeated their game of giving poll boycott calls in 1996 Assembly elections, 2002 and 2008 Assembly polls and during all the Lok Sabha elections between 1989 and 2009. They did not miss giving a poll boycott call during the recent Panchayat elections.
Except during the 1989 Lok Sabha elections, when people in the Kashmir valley fully responded to their call for poll boycott, their calls for staying away from voting failed to evoke any significant response from the people. Since Kashmir province had been rocked by militancy related violence in 1989 people were scared forcing them to heed to the Lok Sabha poll boycott call given by the separatists. The result was that the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat was bagged by the National Conference candidate. Mohd. Shafi Bhat, without a contest and the two NC candidates won the Bar amulla and Anantnag Lok Sabha seats by polling bet ween three per cent and five per cent of the total votes. It was almost a total boycott of the elections in Baramullah and Anantnag. However, with the scare among people declining since 1994 the voting percent age in the Assembly elections in 1996, 2002 and 2008 ranged between 40 and 60 per cent.And whenever the separatists were told about their failure to secure good response to their poll boycott calls they would dish out number of tales to establish their credibility and relevance.
Alleged rigging in the elections was given one of the reasons for their failure in evoking peoples'response to their poll boycott calls. Second reason would be alleged force having been applied on people by the police and the paramilitary forces. And when the 2008 Assembly poll and 2011 Panchayat elections saw a heavy turnout of voters at the polling booths separatists said that people voted in the elections for better roads,drinking water and electricity supply. They would be seen telling that fair voting percentage did not mean that people had reconciled with the state's accession with India. They would be heard telling the world that people in Kashmir would continue to support jehad till the Kashmir issue is resolved. Political pundits are of the view that by giving poll boycott calls separatists plan to stage a comeback in the political arena. Whenever they feel that they were being sidelined and were being made irrelevant they plan for their resurrection by giving calls to people to boycott the elections lest they should be treated as a spent up force. They know that even if 30 to 40 per cent people do not vote they (separatists) can exploit it without realising that in other Indian states polling on an average does not go beyond 45 to 55 per cent. Still people like Geelani, whose bones have become quite hard and his spirit of resistance having increased despite growing age, may lose no time in repeating their game of giving poll boycott calls. It is immaterial for them if their calls are not heard by people. They think their job ends with the poll boycott calls and one hopes people in Jammu and Kashmir, who have grown wiser by a 20-year spell of bloodshed, ignored Geelani's poll boycott call. |
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