Border area voters to boycott poll

JAMMU, Aug 28 (PTI) — More than one lakh voters living along the Line of Control (LoC) in Akhnoor, Marh and Chhamb areas of the Jammu parliamentary constituency have decided to boycott Lok Sabha elections.

Of 152 hyper sensitive border villages, which face the brunt of Pakistani troops firing and shelling in the Jammu Lok Sabha constituency, 31 such villages have decided not to take part in 1999 parliamentary poll in protest against the failure of the state and central governments to rehabilitate them permanently out of the Pakistani troops shelling range, according to villagers of the border area.

The villagers, who lived life of uncertainty in different migrant camps after they fled from area of the Pakistani shelling, told a group of reporters that they would boycott elections this time in protest.

"Unless and until we are rehabilitated ‘permanently’ out of Pakistani shelling range along the Jammu borders, no border villager, will exercise his right of franchise,’’ organiser of Committee of the Border Villagers on Poll Boycott, Moula Ram, said.

In 1998 Lok Sabha poll, election booths were shifted out of border belt due to intense Pakistani troops firing. "How can we vote in such a situation of uncertainty?", he asked.

Meanwhile, nine more candidates today filed their nomination papers for the Anantnag and the Baramula Lok Sabha constituencies raising the number of those in the fray for the two seats of Jammu and Kashmir to 31.

Seven candidates, including Ghulam Nabi Mir of the Jammu and Kashmir Awami League, an outfit of surrendered militants, filed their nominations from Baramula, while two, including Bashir Ahmad of the Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya), filed their papers from Anantnag, an official spokesman said today.

Left parties call for Orissa bandh

BHUBANESWAR, Aug 28 (UNI) — Five political parties in Orissa today called a 12-hour Orissa bandh on September 1 to protest against the killing of a trader allegedly by Dara Singh in Padiabeda village in Mayurbhanj district on Thursday.

Leaders of the CPI, CPM, Janata Dal (Secular), Forward Bloc, and Gana Abhijan Odissa, at a joint news conference here, denounced the attempt of the communal forces in the state to terrorise the minorities before the Lok Sabha polls.

They criticised the state government for its total failure to nab Dara Singh, the main accused in the killings of Australian missionary Graham Stewart Staines and his two sons at Manoharpur in Keonjhar district on January 22.

Meanwhile, Orissa Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang, who along with Minister of State for Home Prasad Harichandan and Social Welfare Minister Saraswati Hembram visited the Padiabeda village, announced here today that Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Amarananda Pattnaik would head the investigation of the gruesome murder and also supervise the combing operation to nab Dara Singh.

Mr Gamang, on arriving here from the village, told newsmen that he had also gone to Karanjia and Thakur-munda and discussed the matter with all sections of the population and appealed to them to maintain peace and law and order.

The Chief Minister also visited the house of the trader Seikh Rahman and consoled the bereaved family.

About 2000 people belonging to the minority community gathered at the village to protest the killing of Seikh Rahman, a small-time cloth trader.

They also pleaded with the Chief Minister to provide them with security apprehending threat to their lives. Mr Gamang directed the police to provide them with adequate security.

The Chief Minister directed the district police to arrest the miscreants involved in the murder of the trader and hoped Dara Singh would be nabbed soon.

The small town of Karanjia yesterday observed a bandh in protest of the killing. The Chief Minister had sanctioned an ex-gratia of Rs two lakh from his relief fund to the next of kin of the victim.

Sources said Dara Singh, absconding ever since the killings of Mr Staines and his two sons, was seen moving in a jeep in some villages under Thakurmunda police station to campaign for a particular political party in the by-election to a post in the panchayat samiti.

The Chief Minister handed over the draft of Rs two lakh to the Keonjhar district collector.

According to official sources, three more people, stated to be associates of Dara Singh, had been picked up for interrogation by the police who had earlier taken three people in connection with the murder.

The Home Guard of the local weekly hat (small market), where the trader was killed, had already lodged an FIR before the police station stating Dara Singh’s involvement in the murder.

The trader was attacked by the miscreants and then thrown into fire. He later succumbed to his injuries at the Karanjia sub-divisional hospital.

Official sources said the combing operation had been launched in the hilly areas of the tribal-dominated Mayurbhanj and Keonjher district to nab Dara Singh and his associates.

TNS adds from Delhi: The BJP on Saturday demanded the resignation of Orissa Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang following the gruesome killing of a Muslim trader in Orissa by criminals led by criminal Dara Singh.

"This is the result of the incompetence and laxity of the Congress Government in Orissa. Preoccupied with its own internal squabbles, the Gamang Government is now busy trying to extract political mileage from its own failure," party general secretary Narendra Modi told reporters here.

He wondered why the state government was unable to nab the culprit who had reportedly even given interviews to the media.

Mr Modi said the Congress claim that Dara Singh had escaped to Uttar Pradesh "has now been shown to be a lie. He was all along in Congress-ruled Orissa. The Congress Government is therefore guilty of criminal negligence and wilfully misleading the people."

Criticising the Orissa Government for its failure to arrest Dara Singh, who was responsible for the brutal murder of the trader in Mayurbhaj district, Mr Modi said it appeared that the state Chief Minister did not have either the time or the inclination to arrest the criminal.

"The BJP deplores the Congress move to create a sense of insecurity among the minorities through criminal acts like those committed by Dara Singh", he added.