Gupkar Alliance to decide on participating in upcoming district council polls

Srinagar: The People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) will decide on its participation in the upcoming district development council, panchayat and urban local bodies elections on November 7.

The Congress, which has expressed solidarity with the alliance but stayed away from its meetings, said it will take a call on participation in the elections after placing its apprehensions about security and other concerns on record with the election commissioner of J&K.

“A meeting of PADG is happening on November 7 in Jammu and the issue of elections will be discussed there. We will take a final call there,” former minister and National Conference (NC) leader Ali Muhammad Sagar told ET.

The NC chief and Lok Sabha member from Srinagar, Farooq Abdullah, is the president of the PAGD, a grouping of Kashmir’s political parties formed recently to fight for restoration of special status and statehood of Jammu and Kashmir. People’s Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti is its vice president and Sajad Lone of People’s Conference is the spokesperson of the alliance. Mufti arrived in Jammu on Thursday to convene a meeting of party workers.

In 2018, regional political parties including the NC and PDP had boycotted the panchayat elections and. Now they are in a fix over participation in the elections as the government formed a new structure of governance by constituting district development councils.

“Delimitation exercise has been concluded and polls announced. It seems the BJP has decided everything on its own. The election commissioner should have conducted an all-party meeting to take all of us on board,” J&K Congress president Ghulam Ahmad Mir told ET.

Mir said the party’s rank and file have been denied adequate security and their mobility has been restricted. “We will write to the election commissioner tomorrow and then decide on participation in the elections,” he said.

On November 4, the J&K election commissioner KK Sharma had announced that eight-phased DDC elections to 280 constituencies in the Union Territory would he held from November 28. By-elections to about 13,241 vacant seats of sarpanchs and panchs and 228 vacant seats in the urban local bodies will be held simultaneously with the DDC polls. The polls will conclude on December 22.

Conducting elections is a major challenge for the government amid increasing attacks against political workers, especially from the BJP. Last week three BJP workers were killed in Kulgam of southern Kashmir. At least 17 political workers have been killed across Kashmir since the beginning of this year. According to officials, the administration has provided secure accommodation to about 750 political workers and 342 others have been given security cover due to the prevailing threat perception.





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