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| Hashim's advice to Hurriyat leaders | | Elections And Azadi | | RUSTAM
JAMMU, June 8: Hashim Qureshi, who in 1971 hijacked an Indian passenger plane to Pakistan and remained in jail for years, has advised the Kashmiri separatists to contest elections and enter the Jammu & Kashmir Legislative Assembly. Qureshi these days leads the little-talked about Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Liberal Party (JKDLP). The JKDLP does stand for liberation but it doesn't resort to violence or unconstitutional methods to achieve the objective. The fact of the matter is that it doesn't speak quite frequently. Hashim Qureshi is one Kashmiri separatist who believes that the UN resolutions on Jammu & Kashmir just cannot be implemented. He is of the view that the UN resolutions have become obsolete. He is right.
Coming back to the point, Qureshi has urged the Kashmiri separatists to take part in the electoral exercises and fight for "Azadi" from within. "IF they (Kashmiri separatists) are in the Assembly, they can make their voice heard. They should not run away from the elections. They should know that election is not a contagious disease. If separatists make it to the Assembly, they can pass an 'azadi' resolution which will bring 'more global attention" to the issue," he had on Thursday said while talking to reporters in Srinagar.
Hashim Qureshi's advice to the separatists is both novel and controversial. It is novel that he has asked the separatists to take part in the state's electoral exercises and it is controversial because he has asked them to use the Legislative Assembly for promoting their separatist and communal agenda. His advice is also unconstitutional. Neither the Indian Constitution nor the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution provides for secession. Both the statute books unequivocally say that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India.
Qureshi has indeed crossed the Lakshman Rekha by suggesting that the Kashmiri separatists should enter the Assembly after contesting elections to pass "azadi" resolution. Qureshi has, it appears, completely forgotten what the BJP-led NDA Government did to the autonomy resolution adopted by the State Assembly years ago at the behest of the National Conference. The National Conference that time had two-thirds majority in the Assembly. The Union Government had rejected this resolution and thrown it into the dustbin. The National Conference, which was sharing power with the BJP at the centre then, could do nothing. It continued to share power with the BJP for some more time after that episode.
One can refer to here a number of instances to show that certain Kashmiri legislators wanted to move certain controversial and unsettling resolutions/private members' bills in the Legislative Assembly, but they failed because the men at the helm didn't allow them to do so taking into consideration the obligations towards the constitution, despite the fact that their own credentials were quite questionable. So much so that even the critics of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), including none other than Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, failed to get the AFSPA revoked, even partially. This is one part of the story.
The other part of the story is the Kashmiri separatists themselves who have been after each other's blood for quite sometime now. Will they accept the Qureshi's advice and take part in electoral exercises? The answer is a big NO. They will not contest elections because they are not just a divided lot but they have also their support-base confined to a few pockets in the Valley proper. They know they would get thoroughly exposed the day they contested elections. Take, for instance, the case of Sajjad Lone, son of the slain Abdul Gani Lone, a popular Kashmiri leader and bitter critic of Sheikh Abdullah. He contested the last Lok Sabha election but only to forfeit his security deposit. The nature of his defeat could be determined from the fact that he could not lead even in that assembly constituency which his father represented a couple of times. The broken-hearted and discarded Sajjad Lone today says he is interested more in the economic independence than in the political independence of Kashmir. Kashmiri separatists know where they stand in Kashmir. They know in participation in electoral exercise lies their destruction. Qureshi is simply seeking to achieve the unachievable.
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