Security being used as pretext to impede democracy: Farooq Abdullah

Srinagar, November 21

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and president of newly formed People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) Farooq Abdullah on Saturday objected to the treatment meted out to the amalgam candidates, saying security was being used as a pretext to impede and customise democracy in the union territory.

In a two-page letter to J&K Election Commissioner KK Sharma, Abdullah, who is at present a Lok Sabha member from Srinagar, said providing security to a select few and literally interning the rest was a gross interference in democracy.

“I am taking the liberty of writing to you about the upcoming DDC elections. A strange and a unique feature has come to the fore. Candidates put up by the PAGD are immediately whisked away to ‘secure locations’ in the name of security and confined to those ‘secure locations’. They are not allowed to canvass, they are completely out of touch with those from whom they are supposed to seek votes,” Abdullah said in the letter.

He said the parties, part of the PAGD, had been in power in the past and had the opportunity to head and run the government and were aware of the challenges posed in the realm of security in a place beset by violence.

“These challenges are not new, but have been painfully persisting for the last three decades. But, the government had structures in place which ensured security for all contestants irrespective of the ideology they espoused or the parties they represented,” he said. — PTI