SRINAGAR: A faction of Indian Kashmir’s main separatist alliance has for the first time decided not to call for a boycott of India’s national elections — saying the polls were “inconsequential.”
But the moderate faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the main separatist alliance in the disputed Himalayan region, said yesterday the elections were “a nonissue” and “inconsequential” and the only vote that matters in Kashmir is one on independence.
The hard-line APHC group headed by firebrand separatist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is expectedly rooting for boycott of the parliamentary elections. But the moderate camp headed by Mirwaiz Maulvi Omar Farooq has come up with a stand describing the polls as a “nonissue” and have not issued any boycott call to the people.
“We’re not going to waste time and energy on running a boycott campaign,” said Saleem Geelani, the faction’s spokesman, adding that people should decide for themselves if they want to vote.
“Elections are a nonissue and APHC is not going to waste time and energy on running a boycott campaign. People should take a decision based on the call of their conscience,” Maulvi Abbas Ansari, acting chairman of the APHC, said.
Last week, Sajjad Gani Lone, a Kashmiri separatist leader, announced his plans to participate in the elections, becoming the first senior separatist to contest polls since an armed rebellion against Indian rule began two decades ago. The failure of the poll boycott call in the last state assembly elections has thrown the Kashmiri separatist camp into a quandary vis-à-vis the upcoming parliamentary elections.
While in the state assembly elections, there was absolute unanimity in the separatist camp for issuing a boycott call, the situation this time is different and indicative of cracks in the camp for a response to the parliamentary elections.
The hard-line camp has even given a call for strikes and protests on poll days in the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley. It needs, however, to be seen as to how the people would respond to Geelani’s call this time as the issues characterizing assembly and parliamentary elections vary from each other.
— With input from agencies
