EC observers open window for J&K poll

Arun Joshi
Tribune News Service
Jammu, April 17

The recommendation of three election observers to hold the Assembly elections in J&K in June, if accepted, will help the state to deal with the constitutional crisis effectively before it erupts if the polls are not held before the expiry of the current spell of President’s rule in the state.

By now, J&K should have been midway through the state elections to constitute the House before May 19, the end of the six months after the dissolution of the Assembly. But the Pulwama terror attack was used as a plea to spotlight the heightened security concerns to delay the process by the state administration and Ministry of Home Affairs without giving any convincing answer as to how the situation was conducive for holding the Lok Sabha elections.

Deeply mystified and intrigued by the Election Commission’s decision not to hold simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls, National Conference vice-president and former CM Omar Abdullah had raised a pertinent question about the reasoning for delaying the Assembly polls. “It is beyond comprehension.”

The Election Commission-appointed observers’ recommendations are a clear manifestation of the overwhelming plea of the political groups in J&K for early Assembly poll.

The use of one particular attack, though unprecedented in some ways, for delaying the democratic process, especially when the parliamentary elections were announced as per the schedule for the six seats in J&K, did not reconcile the contradictions.

Of course, the security requirement for the Assembly elections is more because of the number of the candidates — there are 87 Assembly seats — and at least 46 of them in the Valley require extra precaution. The recent killing of an RSS leader and his PSO by militants in Kishtwar town in the Jammu region on April 9 has enhanced the number of hypersensitive places in the state, but then elections in the past have been held in worst circumstances in the state.

At the moment, realistically speaking, a mood for the polls is in the air. The Baramulla and Jammu seats have gone to the polls with a big positive that the first phase was peaceful. This is a great plus. One odd isolated incident of stone or grenade throwing can happen anywhere in the country.

On Thursday, the second phase of the polling would be over and that should enable the other states to spare the troops for the election duty in Jammu and Kashmir.

Two things deserve serious attention: One, the constitutional propriety should be upheld over shifting the goalposts. The absence of a firm deadline for holding the polls would create many doubts among the people of J&K, particularly in the Valley, who have been categories as an alienated lot from the mainland by the Kashmir-centric parties.

Second, the decision not to hold the simultaneous polls because of the Pulwama attack has proven to be incorrect, because there was an attempt to repeat Pulwama on the Jammu-Srinagar highway last month as well. Such attempts would continue because the militants and other vested interests would like to keep the poll process in a frozen mode as long as they can manage it. That would be falling into the trap of the anti-election forces.

Now the EC observers have flipped the pages of calendar and shown when the elections can be held. It needs to be respected.