Srinagar, Apr 12 (KNS): Awami National Conference (ANC) Senior Vice President, Muzzafar Shah has said the people in J&K are vehemently opposed to capital punishment and such actions as in the case of Jhadav need to be halted lest they escalate into a military confrontation and engulf both India and Pakistan towards unimaginable destruction.
“It is surprising that no speakers neither from Pakistan side nor from Indian side even uttered a word about the eight lives lost during the by-polls in Srinagar day before,” Shah said, while speaking at the Indo-Pak peace process seminar conducted by OP Shah for the Centre for Peace and Progress in IIC New Delhi yesterday, which attended by the former Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri, High Commissioner Basit, noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani, diplomats Mani Shankar Aiyer, Satish Lamba,Former MP Saifudin Soz and Prof Bhim Singh.
While speaking at the round table, Shah said, “The seventy years of bilateral Indo-Pak talks, umpteen agreements and declarations have failed in resolving the issues between the two warring neighbors including the main issue, an acceptable solution to the burning Kashmir Imbroglio.”
He said that 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, Gilgit and Muzzafarabad to come up with tangible proposals for a permanent settlement of the Kashmir issue.
While speaking to reporters after the seminar, Shah said that the Election Commission of India has never honoured 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 point & today’s elections were conducted without the preparedness of the Govt machinery resulting in eight deaths. The ECI, both the Govts of India & the state are responsible for this mayhem on the streets of the Kashmir valley,” he said.
He said that the decision to postpone the Anantnag parliamentary by-election is an admission of its 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, Shah said that holding of elections in 2014 & 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 lac 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, total collapse of law & Order as evident by the pathetic turnout & budding lives lost, we call upon all right thinking people of the state to draw a future line of action. (KNS)