Though the plans of installing a handpicked political defector were obvious when Governor Satya Pal Malik weeks before the municipal elections in Jammu and Kashmir during an interview on a TV news channel in Delhi said that Junaid Azam Matoo would be the Mayor Srinagar Municipal Corporation but even naives won’t imagine that the voting conscience of the newly elected corporators of Srinagar Municipal Corporation will sell their votes against all good standards of voting conscience so cheaply that they will vote in majority for one party candidate for the post of Mayor and for the other party candidate for the post of Deputy Mayor. All standards of political understand abilities make us to understand that both Mayor and Deputy Mayor had to be from one party only more so when State Congress President Gh Ahmad Mir had said that the battle for Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Srinagar Municipal Corporation is a direct contest between the Congress and RSS-BJP combine and 49 independent had the role of tie breakers. Interestingly the 49 independent corporators won the election on fight against BJP and the mainstream political parties allying openly with it but the way they voted for a BJP backed candidate known for defecting from one party to the other shows that the soul of voting conscience is dying in Kashmir. The corporators who sided with the BJP backed candidate for the post of Mayor have shown that they choose to go the PDP way. The independent corporators supported the BJP backed candidate the way PDP choose to ally with BJP after seeking votes against BJP in 2014 assembly elections. Since a bigger reason for the unprecedented drop in the turn out for all reasons was the betrayal of the mandate the PDP sought against BJP in 2014 assembly elections but used it for alliance with BJP later.
Shocking , hurting and insulting it is for the Srinagar electorate that a mayor elected by majority of the corporators who have won on 3-4% turn out claims to be the trend setter of a new change in Kashmir and challenges the popularity of those whose participation could have rendered him faceless not to talk of his winning an election to represent a ward in Srinagar city.
The newly elected corporators of Srinagar Municipal Corporation had enough reasons to restrain from falling in the trap of Sajad Lone headed Peoples’ Conference a party which has virtually become an unattached ally of BJP. Keeping in view the open bidding of just 3-4% of the total Srinagar electorate by the independent corporators of the Srinagar Municipal Corporation the number of voters in Srinagar and other parts of Kashmir valley may now come down from three digits to just two digits which means number of voters could be less than 100 now. Shocking , hurting and insulting it is for the Srinagar electorate that a mayor elected by majority of the corporators who have won on 3-4% turn out claims to be the trend setter of a new change in Kashmir and challenges the popularity of those whose participation could have rendered him faceless not to talk of his wining an election to represent a ward in Srinagar city.
