SRINAGAR: A separatist leader in Indian-administered Kashmir announced plans yesterday to run in upcoming national polls, becoming the first senior separatist to contest elections since an armed rebellion against Indian rule began two decades ago.
“Fighting elections is a change of strategy, not a change of ideology,” Sajjad Gani Lone told reporters in Srinagar, the capital of Jammu-Kashmir state. He is running for the federal Parliament.
Chairman of the People’s Conference (PC) and a separatist voice in Kashmir, Lone announced his decision at a crowded press conference.
Sajjad’s decision to join the mainstream politics in Kashmir is a watershed development here, as he is the first major separatist leader to bid farewell to separatist politics and partake in the upcoming battle at the hustings.
Addressing a media conference at his uptown Rawalpora residence to make the announcement, which was already a topic of local media discussion for about a week, Sajjad said, “Joining the electoral process is only a change of strategy and not ideology.”
“This will help me in carrying the voice of my people to the Indian Parliament. I would like to make an attempt to engage and push for a real process of negotiations.” He added that he was trying to “reorient our struggle and bring it in tune with the existing realities as I perceive them.”
Though he didn’t disclose the constituency from which he will be contesting the elections, it is a foregone conclusion that it would be north Kashmir Baramulla constituency from where People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has already nominated former minister Dilawar Mir as its candidate.
Ruling National Conference (NC) is yet to decide its candidate for the constituency which comprises of the three north Kashmir districts of Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipore.
Sajjad was earlier part of the separatist All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) till the 2002 state assembly polls, but parted ways after the firebrand separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani alleged that the PC had fielded its candidate from the north Kashmir Handwara constituency, a charge denied by Sajjad.
