INDIA: Kashmir Polls Close with High Turnout, Despite Violence

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 8 2002 (IPS) - Officials in Indian-administered Kashmir have reason to congratulate themselves for completing polling for a new assembly in the disputed territory on Tuesday, in the face of repeated attacks by ‘jihadist’ militant groups to disrupt the three-week voting process.

The fourth part of the staggered four-phase elections, which began on Sep 16, was considered the most difficult – it covered Doda district, where security forces have in the past used helicopter gunships to hunt down heavily armed militants hiding in the forested mountainsides.

But in Doda, the Election Commission reported a high 52 percent polling although Tuesday began with a two-man suicide squad taking up positions outside the Doda town hall and firing indiscriminately in an apparent ‘fedayeen’ or suicide mission.

In a gunbattle that ensued, two men of the central reserve police force (CRPF) and a militant were killed and several other people including bystanders injured. The second militant melted away into the bylanes of Doda town.

Overall, despite threats and a boycott call by separatist political groups, the elections recorded an average 45 percent voter turnout.

At least 140 people and 88 security personnel have been killed by militant squads – which India says are based in rival Pakistan that lays claim to Kashmir – since the elections were declared in August. The victims included Mushtaq Ahmed Lone, the state’s law minister who was shot dead at an election rally.

”This was not unexpectedà as the polls were turning out successful the desperation among the militants to stop the elections has been increasing,” Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani said at a televised convention of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at Gandhinagar, capital of western Gujarat state .

Advani, who also holds the key home ministry, said the terrain in Doda was such that there was always the possibility of an attack and that extra precautions had been taken. The district was saturated with close to 90,000 men in uniform for Tuesday’s polling.

Gandhinagar itself was the scene of a suicide attack on Sep. 25 by a two man squad, which entered the Swaminarayan temple complex and mowed down 30 Hindu devotees before commandos of the elite National Security Guard were flown in to eliminate them.

The Gandhinagar attack was believed to have been carried out in revenge for a pogrom unleashed against the minority Muslim community in Gujarat late February and early March with support from the BJP state government there led by Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

Some 2,000 people died in the pogrom and although important institutions like the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), a statutory body, have blamed Modi for the carnage, the BJP has steadfastly refused to remove him from the chief ministership.

Modi was prevented by the Election Commission from calling snap polls in Gujarat that would have been coincident with the Kashmir elections. Many saw his attempt to have polls as a crude attempt to take advantage of a widening communal divide between Muslims and majority Hindus in the country.

On Tuesday, Advani declared that if the BJP was returned to power in Gujarat, Modi would continue to be chief minister of the state.

Leading election analysts like Yogendra Yadav have attributed the high voter turnout in Kashmir to a wave against the ruling National Conference party, a partner in the BJP-led coalition government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The failure of the National Conference to protest the carnage in Gujarat has been an important election issue in Kashmir, according to Saifuddin Soz, a former minister at the centre and now a leader of the Congress party in Kashmir.

Reference to the Gujarat pogrom was made at the United Nations General Assembly on Sep. 12 by Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf. But his main concern there was Muslim-majority Kashmir, where he predicted that the elections would be ”once again rigged”.

Vajpayee has himself said publicly that he has had to ”hang his head in shame” at the events in Gujarat, but promised to ensure that the elections in Kashmir would be free and fair.

Although no foreign observers were asked to monitor the elections, the Election Commission invited international media to cover it and made arrangements for diplomats to go to any polling booth or centre they wished to visit.

India has accused Pakistan of being behind the attempts to disrupt the elections in Kashmir because of its own claims over the territory, which remained a princely state when Pakistan was carved out of a larger British India as a homeland for the sub-continent’s Muslims in 1947.

But the two new countries went to war over the territory within months of the partition and have for more than 50 years hung on to portions of Kashmir divided by the Line of Control (LoC). Wars in 1965, 1971 and in 1999 have failed settle the issue.

Indian leaders see the relatively high voter turnout in the just-finished election in Kashmir as a sign of acceptance of the territory’s status as a state within the Indian Union and rejection of violent militancy, which they allege is supported by Islamabad for its own interests.

Before the elections began, warnings were issued of reprisals against voters by the Pakistan-based ‘jihadist’ militant groups, Lashkar-e-Toiba (Soldiers of God) and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of the Pure). New Delhi responded by saturating the state with troops and staggering the elections to ensure maximum concentration of personnel.

Besides the security forces within the state, India has maintained some 700,000 troops along the Line of Control and the international border, which have been in battle-readiness since a suicide attack on Parliament House in December.

INDIA: Kashmir Polls Close with High Turnout, Despite Violence

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Oct 8 2002 (IPS) - Officials in Indian-administered Kashmir have reason to congratulate themselves for completing polling for a new assembly in the disputed territory on Tuesday, in the face of repeated attacks by ‘jihadist’ militant groups to disrupt the three-week voting process.
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