NEW DELHI, Jan 29 (1995): India’s plans to hold polls in strife-torn Kashmir will not be derailed by the Republic Day bomb blasts that exposed a serious breach of security, the Kashmir government said Sunday.
A spokesman for the state administration in Jammu, Kashmir’s winter capital, said the “broad policy to work for the restoration of democratic processes at the earliest” still held good, the Press Trust of India reported.
Kashmir has been without an elected administration and ruled directly by New Delhi since a Moslem moderate government quit in 1990 at the height of the Moslem militant campaign for an end to Indian rule.
Governor K.V. Krishna Rao, a federal appointee who escaped unhurt from the blasts Thursday which killed eight people, has accused Pakistan of plotting the explosions to sabotage Indian plans to hold elections in Kashmir this year.
Pakistan and India have fought two wars over Kashmir, claimed and held in part by both, since the subcontinent’s 1947 independence from British rule.