Baramulla LS Polls: From spurning to casting a vote after 30 years, senior citizens break shackles to elect their representative

Baramulla: For the first time after 1996 legislative assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, Abdul Rashid Dar of Azad Gunj in north Kashmir’s Baramulla area voted again in 2024 parliamentary polls.
After spurning to vote for more than three decades, Majority of the residents of Azad Gunj in north Kashmir’s Baramulla broke the vow of poll boycott after 30 years.
A 59-year-old Dar said that he case a vote after 30 years. “The first vote I cast was some three decades back in 1996. Since then, this is the first time I am voting to choose our own representative,” Dar said.
On asking the reason from boycotting to participating in the voting process, Dar said, “In these years, I and many others like me learnt that the roads and the drains can be constructed through the deputy commissioners, alleys by municipal committees and electric transformers by the help of public funding.”
“However, this time we are fighting against all those attempts in which the dignity and the respect of Kashmiris was mopped and compromised from the past five years,” he said.
According to the locals of Azad Gunj, this is the first time in the past 30 years, the alleys of Azad Gunj roared with huge voters.
The locals who were waiting in a long queue to cast their vote said that they have been waiting for a long time for this opportunity to vote and speak their heart out in favour of their constituents.
The story of voting after more than two decades is not the ordeal of only Dar’s family, another excited senior citizen, Ghulam Mohi-ud-Din of Azad Gunj narrated the same baptism of fire.
Mushtaq Ahmad of Azad Gunj said that they used to see deserted roads and empty polling stations.
“The alleys of Azad Gunj which used to remain deserted and silent during the poll days witnessed a new charm and hustle after 30 years,” Mushtaq said