Poll rigging in 1987 led to gun culture: Mehbooba

Opposition Peoples Democratic Party on Monday alleged that rigging of polls by the National Conference in 1987 forced Kashmiri youth to pick up guns for securing their rights.

Addressing party workers in north Kashmir’s volatile Sopore, PDP president Mehbooba Mufti said this has been acknowledged even by the top militant leaders like Syed Salah-u-Din, who himself was a candidate in the Assembly elections, but was defeated through brazen rigging.

She alleged that NC has been intolerant of democracy and dissent ever since its inception. “Whenever NC was at the helm of affairs, they sort to rig the elections from 1952 itself that was one major reason why the people of the state don’t have the same faith in democratic process as in other parts of the country,” she said.

She claimed the government has lived up to the history of NC in treating the democratic right of dissent with contempt and repression.

“Youth have to face the brunt of this intolerance, which resulted into the death of hundreds of them during the last five years, while thousands have been involved in police cases, just because they agitated against the atrocities and excesses,” she added.

Mehbooba said in order to hide his failures on all fronts, the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is inventing an alibi everyday and has now shifted the blame for corruption and mis-governance to militancy, even though in 2009, he himself acknowledged that the state was now peaceful and ready for progress.

“But at the end of his tenure now, he has nothing to show by way of his performance, but corruption, power crisis, mis-governance, nepotism, backdoor appointments, drug scam, examination scandal, BOPEE scam and cricket scam stand out his (Abdullah’s) major achievements,” she alleged.