SRINAGAR, Feb 12 (2002) – Kashmir’s main separatist alliance announced on Tuesday a six-member election commission which it said would conduct elections in the Indian and Pakistani parts of Kashmir to choose true representatives.
The scenic Himalayan region is at the heart of the current military stand-off between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
Sajad Ali, a retired Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Pakistan and an Indian human rights activist, Tapan Bose, would lead the six-member election commission, Abdul Gani Bhat, the chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) said.
Last month Hurriyat, which bands nearly two dozen religious, social and political groups, said it would conduct its own elections after Indian leaders questioned the alliance’s representative character.
But the Hurriyat did not mention the time of elections.
It has said in the past it intends to start the exercise in the Kashmir Valley where a 12-year revolt rages, followed by Jammu and the Buddhist-dominated Ladakh region and then the Pakistani-administered part of the Kashmir.
“APHC seeks a seat on a peace table for talks to resolve disputes on Jammu and Kashmir in the interest of a better world, better future…,” Bhat said.
Hurriyat, which has been seeking the implementation of a 1948 U.N. resolution for a plebiscite to decide whether Kashmir should be folded into India or Pakistan, has said it will not take part in elections to the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly which are due this year.
Bhat said the alliance was trying to bring peace in Kashmir over which India and Pakistan have twice gone to war since they won independence from Britain in 1947.
“I appeal to the president of Pakistan who represents power and will and the prime minister of India representing ethos and consensus to join us in our efforts to find a peaceful solution to the dispute,” Bhat said.
India, incensed by an attack on its parliament which it blamed on two Pakistan-based guerrilla groups operating in Kashmir, has ordered a huge military build-up on the border with Pakistan to force it to stop helping the rebels.
Islamabad has detained hundreds of religious extremists, shut down their offices, and denounced terrorism in all its forms. It has said it will give diplomatic and political support to the Kashmiri people in what it calls their struggle for self-determination.
More than 33,000 people have been killed since the rebellion broke out in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state at the end of 1989. Separatists put the toll closer 80,000.
