The president of Peoples Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) Farooq Abdullah wrote a letter to the election commissioner of J&K KK Sharma on Saturday, seeking transparent security arrangements for candidates contesting the upcoming DDC polls.
In the letter, Farooq said “The democracy is in a state of fragility in J&K and no government has the right to alter the institutional foundation of democracy in J&K, nourished by the sacrifices of thousands of political workers.”
He said that these security challenges are not new here and that they have been painfully persisting for the last three decades in the Valley.
“The democratic journey is a bloodied journey in the Valley, soaked in the blood of thousands of political workers who have laid down their life for the sake of democracy,” Abdullah said in the letter.
He said that using ‘security’ as a reason to modify the democracy is a “desecration of those sacrifices when the very conflict that consumed their lives is used as an alibi to customize the democracy.”
In view of the complaints from PAGD candidates about them being confined in name of security, Peoples Alliance President Dr Farooq Abdullah has written to J&K Election Commissioner K K Sharma seeking transparent security arrangements for DDC candidates across the board. pic.twitter.com/gssTxpNorO
— JKNC (@JKNC_) November 21, 2020
Calling security a thing to counter in J&K, Abdullah said: “Security is a challenge here and it is the responsibility of the current government to keep that in check using fair and transparent manner,” he said, adding “providing security to a selected group and confining others is a gross interference in the democracy.”
Yesterday, a former MLA from South Kashmir’s Kulgam and a senior leader of Communist Party of India (CPIm) Muhammad Yusuf Tarigami had also written to the lieutenant Governor of J&K Manoj Sinha regarding the candidates for DDC who were not being allowed to hold campaign due to “perceived threat to their lives”.