As the campaigning for the Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency scheduled to go to polls in the first phase of ensuing Lok Sabha elections has started picking up, the sloganeering on Kashmir resolution and the recent ban on Jamat-e-Islamic and Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) by Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and its arch rival National Conference has become the point of public debate. Knowing that during last seventy years false sloganeering has become the political tool for power struggle for two largest regional political parties National Conference and PDP in Kashmir, people tend to make laughable arguments over the statements of both PDP and National Conference over Kashmir issue and ban on Jamat-e-Islamic and JKLF . The tragedy with the people of Kashmir is that National Conference and PDP presently in fray for the lok sabha elections in three valley constituencies have largely contributed to the erosion of public faith in the working of the democratic system here in this only muslim majority state of the country. Since people know it better than the political parties contesting elections that government has denied them an opportunity to elect the government of their own choice before the end of six month long presidential rule imposed after the expiry of the governor’s rule last year, the holding of Lok Sabha elections does not mean much to the people who are upset over the government’s non seriousness on the restoration of popular rule in the state. The conduct of Lok Sabha elections and deferment of assembly elections has generated public anger not only in Kashmir valley but in parts of Jammu and Ladhak regions of the state as well.
Had PDP and National Conference been true to their words, the anger among youth won’t have fueled on the streets in Kashmir and hundreds of them won’t have fallen prey to pellets and bullets in the continuing phase of public unrest intensify year after year .
Both leading regional mainstream political parties contesting Lok Saha elections too don’t seem to have learnt any lesson from their failures of last several decades as they tend to appease the voter by renewing the slogans they always raised in election times in the past and forget all about the slogans after their election to parliament the highest legislative body of the country. Had PDP and National Conference been true to their words, the anger among youth won’t have fueled on the streets in Kashmir and hundreds of them won’t have fallen prey to pellets and bullets in the continuing phase of public unrest intensify year after year .
