Why put off J-K panchayat poll?

Arun Joshi          

THERE was a near consensus among the Kashmir-centric parties at the All Parties Meeting in Jammu on Sunday that the situation in Kashmir was not conducive to holding the panchayat elections. The risks were reeled out, like the preview of a horror film. Conjectures were made about a possible bloodbath; and, everyone flinched from taking a call on the revival of grassroots democracy.

It is understood that MLAs are not in favour of having panchayats polls for they don't want to share their power; they want total control, including financial control over the development works. They thought of all ways to stall the panchayat polls and succeeded in doing so. 

Many questions, however, remain unanswered: 

1 Will not holding panchayat polls help stabilise the situation in Kashmir? The leaders in the ruling coalition in Jammu and Kashmir and the BJP at the Centre have been claiming day in and day out that the situation in Kashmir has considerably improved; they cite a marked decline in stone-throwing and militancy related incidents. The army and the police boast that they had killed more than 200 militants in 2017. 

Interestingly, on Tuesday, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, in a written reply in the legislative Assembly, noted that 126 youth had joined militancy last year. This is a big number. She was talking of the local youth. 

The number of the infiltrators from across the border was almost the same. It may seem as a zero-sum game. But it is not. There is a marked change in the physical and psychological landscape. Militants have gained more ground — they are physically present in some areas, but the number of their sympathisers willing to pick up stones and target the soldiers has grown astronomically. Locals have become part of the fight against the army.

With the message going around that the government is to defer the polls yet again — the panchayat polls were due in early 2016 — the things should have subsided. But that has not happened. In fact, the grenade attacks on the CRPF patrol party in Tral and the gunshots outside the army camp in Pulwama are indicative of a continued bad situation.

The attack on the SMHS hospital in Srinagar on Tuesday brought yet another low in the situation. The militants crossed the limit by targeting hospitals in their campaign of shooting and killing. This has exposed Kashmiris to new dangers. Going by the logic that non-holding of the panchayat elections would save the situation and slow down the violent instincts of militants who would sabotage the polls with guns and grenades, Tuesday's incident should not have taken place at all. But it did happen,  exposing that the violence-and-polls theory was more of a political ploy than a genuine concern.

2 Will the denial of grassroots democracy help stabilise the situation? If that is the case, this logic can be extended to all elections. Already, the bypoll to the Anantnag parliamentary constituency, due since 2016, has not been held. The seat had fallen vacant after Mehbooba Mufti quit the seat on her election to the Legislative Assembly. 

It is not merely the question that violence during the Srinagar parliamentary bypoll in April last year resulted in the deferment of the Anantnag bypoll. In fact, it demonstrated that the government lacked the will to hold the polls. It refused to stand up to the forces of violence. Can it stand up to the forces of violence when the General Election is scheduled to be held early next year, if not earlier? There are doubts. Given the retreat of the government on holding polls, it looks unlikely that it would take the call when the elections are announced. 

3 The most serious question is why the holding of panchayat elections was made to sound like an exercise prescribed and imposed by the Centre and Governor NN Vohra? Indeed, the Governor and the Union Ministry of Home Affairs were keen on the panchayat polls; the argument was simple: elections would attract a widespread participation as had happened in 2011 — after a bad year of street protests and killing of 120 people in 2010. Nearly 80 per cent voters turned up for polling, breaking all records. With the panchayats getting their money and developmental tasks, the development-oriented governance could have changed the scenario. That was the thinking. Why was there not much violence and trouble from 2011 to early 2016? The answer is that the panchayats were operating during that period and a modicum of governance was getting delivered at the grassroots level. The present dispensation failed to read the message. Postponing elections doesn't improve situations; rather it works the other way round.

[email protected]