Engineer Rashid to hold hunger strike on November 28

Jailed Lok Sabha MP and Awami Itihaad Party (AIP) chief Engineer Rashid has announced that he will observe a one-day symbolic hunger strike inside Tihar Jail on Friday to protest what he described as the “bulldozing of constitutional rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.”

The AIP on Thursday released a letter written by Rashid to the Lok Sabha Speaker. The letter, dated November 25 and signed from Tihar Jail No. 1, was forwarded to the party leadership through his legal counsel, the party said.

In the letter, Rashid wrote that while the people of India have long taken pride in the Constitution handed down by their elders, he felt it was “mocking both the Constitution and the people of J&K” to see a Kashmiri-translated version of the document released by the President “when the constitutional guarantees and rights of Kashmiris have been bulldozed and tampered.”

“Their elected MP has been jailed, their state has been broken into pieces and their liberty and rights have been curtailed,” the letter states. Rashid added that such gestures “mean very little to those who truly believe in upholding the real spirit of the Constitution, including Kashmiris.”

He also questioned how “the majority in Parliament can be used to bulldoze and dilute the Preamble of the Constitution.”

Rashid further alleged that if the government continues to justify “bulldozer justice, custodial killings, demolishing houses, removing the CJI from the panel to nominate the Chief Election Commissioner, putting thousands of Kashmiris in jails, misusing central agencies against Kashmiris and strengthening draconian laws like UAPA,” it would give “Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar sleepless nights in the eternal world.”

“I would be observing a symbolic hunger strike in Tihar Jail on November 28,” he said.