New Delhi: The people in J&K are vehemently opposed to capital punishment and such actions, either by India or Pakistan, as in the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav, need to be halted lest they escalate into a military confrontation and engulf the two countries towards an unimaginable destruction. However, it was shocking that nobody–either from the Pakistani side or Indian–uttered a word about the eight lives lost during the parliamentary by-lections in Srinagar on Sunday.
This was stated by ANC Senior Vice-President Muzzafar Shah while speaking at a seminar on Indo-Pak peace process organised by OP Shah for the Centre for Peace & Progress at IIC New Delhi on Tuesday.
The seminar was attended among others by former Pakistan Foreign Minister KhursheedKasuri,High Commissioner Basit, noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani, diplomats Mani Shankar Aiyer and Satish Lamba, former MP Saifudin Soz and Prof Bhim Singh.
While speaking at the roundtable, Mr Shah said that 70 years of bilateral Indo-Pak talks, umpteen agreements and declarations have failed in resolving the issues between the two warring neighbours including the main issue, “an acceptable solution to the burning Kashmir Imbroglio.”The one way out could be to let the civil society of J&K State on both sides of the LOC be allowed to meet freely at the five regions of the state in Srinagar, Jammu, Ladakh, Gilgitand Muzzafarabad to come up with tangible proposals for a permanent settlement of the Kashmir issue, he said.
While speaking to reporters after the seminar, The ANC V-P said the Election Commission of India has never acknowledged the ground situation nor the wishes of the people in the state and has many times forced elections on the people when the conditions were not conducive at all. They have always made it a prestige issue and Sunday’s elections were conducted without the preparedness of the Government machinery resulting in eight deaths. The ECI,the governments of India and the state are responsible for this mayhem that took place on the streets of Kashmir Valley, he said.
The decision to postpone the Anantnag parliamentary by-election is an admission of ECI’s defeat in Srinagar. The April 9 polls in Srinagar, held in defiance of the wishes of the people of Kashmir, have created a macabre record of seeing a toll (8) higher than the percentage (7.14) of votes cast.
Moreover, the Anantnag postponement demanded a day earlier by PDP-BJP joint candidate can be seen as a severe indictment of the State Government & the Election Commission of India. Now, with eight lives lost and the 50-year lowest turnout record created, it is incumbent upon the state govt to resign, he said.
Reminding the reporters, Mr Shah said that holding of elections in 2014 and now in 2017 was not conducive at all and it is worth recalling that ANC in 2014 had approached the ECI and the apex court seeking postponement of Assembly elections in the state, when there was chaos in Kashmir due to unprecedented floods with more than six lakh people having shifted out of their homes. Unfortunately, our demand went unheeded and the poll results yielded disastrous consequences for the state in the form of PDP-BJP Government.
Since the latest Srinagar by-elections have also been held amid massive public disenchantment and total collapse of law &order as evident by the pathetic turnout and budding lives lost, we call upon all right thinking people of the state to draw a future line of action.
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