SRINAGAR: The All Parties Hurriyat Conference yesterday asked mainstream politicians in Indian Kashmir to pull out of the election process or “face social boycott in the future.”

Addressing a media conference here, Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, chairman of his faction of the Hurriyat, said: “This is the last call for the so-called mainstream politicians to join the separatist movement and pull out of the elections.”

“If they still choose to contest elections, the people shall start a social boycott campaign against them.” He blamed the mainstream political parties for the “present mess in the state.”

“They have been saying that the elections are not for resolution of the Kashmir dispute, but for good governance and addressing the problems of unemployment, lack of development, etc.

“They have been ruling Kashmir for 60 years and they are responsible for the problems which they now claim to address after winning the elections.”

“Elections are ultimately projected as a sort of referendum by India and that is why we have called for a complete boycott of such a process,” he said.

The Mirwaiz also asked the migrant Kashmiri Hindus, Pandits as they are called, not to participate in the elections through exercise of postal ballots. “Such a step by the members of the community would further deepen the wedge between the Pandits and the Muslims living here,” he said.

The Hurriyat chairman, after heading a meeting of the separatists’ joint Coordination Committee, alleged that the authorities had installed electronic jamming equipment outside his uptown Nigeen residence in the city.

Meanwhile, the high-profile north Kashmir assembly constituency of Ganderbal, considered a National Conference (NC) bastion for years, has brought many politicians to power, but has also seen them biting the dust.

When NC founder Sheikh Abdullah returned to mainstream politics in 1975 after 22 years of political disillusionment with New Delhi, the then sitting Congress legislator from Ganderbal, Muhammad Maqbool Bhat, quit the seat to allow the Lion of Kashmir — as the Sheikh was known — to fight the bypolls. The Sheikh won the 1975 bypolls from there and became chief minister with Congress support. He later fell out with the Congress and won elections from Ganderbal again in 1977.

Traditionally a strong bastion of the NC, the constituency has earlier also been represented by NC candidates in 1957 and 1962. After the Sheikh’s death in 1982, his son and present NC patron Farooq Abdullah won elections from here in 1983, 1987 and 1996.

Because of their unassailable grip on this constituency, the NC regarded Ganderbal as its political backyard until the voters shocked them in 2002 when a nonentity, Qazi Muhammad Afzal, of the People’s Democratic Party defeated the NC president and its then chief ministerial candidate Omar Abdullah by 2,870 votes.

Qazi secured 11,622 votes as compared to 8,752 polled by Omar. The total number of votes polled was 24,081 in the 2002 elections. The stage is once again set for a battle royal in this prestigious constituency as Omar once again is pitted against Qazi and 10 other candidates of different parties and independents.