NEW DELHI: Elections must not be held now in Jammu and Kashmir due to the continuing turmoil, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) President Mehbooba Mufti says, adding that mainstream political parties in the state need to find their “bearings and space again.”
Mehbooba also ruled out an alliance between the PDP and the Congress for the coming assembly elections due by October and warned against attempts to “demonize” her party in view of the widespread unrest sparked off by the Amarnath shrine land row.
Even as the Election Commission has started consulting other parties to ascertain their views on the timing of elections in Jammu and Kashmir, the PDP leader said the time was “not at all conducive” for balloting.
Mehbooba, whose party’s withdrawal of support to the Congress led to governor’s rule in the state, felt that if elections were “imposed” on the state, it would have an adverse impact on the situation.
“Today, the mere announcement of elections will be like a red rag,” Mehbooba said in an interview with IANS. “You need to give breathing space to people (in Kashmir), and also go in for confidence-building measures which give a healing touch to the situation,” she said.
The recent upsurge in the Kashmir Valley in support of Jammu and Kashmir’s independence has shrunk the political space for the mainstream parties, she pointed out. “Mainstream parties ko zameen par aane ka mauka tho do (give the mainstream parties a chance to find their bearings and space again).”
Would her party boycott the polls if they were announced now? Mehbooba was ambivalent: “We are waiting and watching the situation. We will discuss this in our party and then take a view. As I said, elections are not the issue today. If they are announced now, they will become an issue in the negative sense.”
She ruled out a PDP-Congress tie-up again. “There is so much polarization. It has become PDP versus the others. Given the wedge between the two parties, a tie-up (with the Congress) will be very difficult.”
Mehbooba decried what she said were attempts to “demonize” her party, and advocated a “middle path” to resolve the Kashmir tangle. “Unfortunately, we have a section in our country with a mindset that the status quo in Jammu and Kashmir should be maintained. You cannot have status quo in Jammu and Kashmir today.
“If you have to maintain the country’s territorial sovereignty, the internal status quo has to be changed, on both sides of Kashmir. We had talked about self-rule, a regional council, revocation of the Special Powers Act, reduction of troops. And giving a sense of unification to Kashmir without jeopardizing the authority of either country on both sides.”
Meanwhile, India has deployed its top fighter jets in Kashmir, ostensibly for better border management, but analysts said the move was aimed at Pakistan after relations between the nuclear-armed rivals soured in recent months.
A four-year-old peace process between the two countries has virtually stalled, initially because of political turmoil in Pakistan and more recently after a string of bombings in India and at the Indian Embassy in Kabul. India blamed Pakistan for the Kabul attack in July — a charge Islamabad denied — saying it had put the peace process in “distress.”
