J&K Admin favouring BJP in polls, alleges DDC candidate from Pulwama

Pulwama: A District Development Council candidate from south Kashmir’s Pulwama district has accused the Jammu and Kashmir administration of favouring Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) in the run-up to the DDC polls.

According to the candidate Rukiya Jaan, who recently lost the election from Pulwama’s Kakapora second constituency, the polling station for her opponents from BJP and National Conference was placed just outside their homes while as the location for Rukiya Jaan was set more than five kilometres away from her village.

“By doing this, the district administration whom we consider responsible for the act did this to created hurdles for the voters so that we get fewer votes,” said Rukiya’s husband Manzoor Ahmed, who believes that the alleged mismanagement has paved the way to their opponents.

Rukiya is a resident of Reshipora Pulwama and her polling station was situated at Gulbugh, some five kilometres away from her residence. She got 350 votes and her opponents Minha Lateef from Patalbagh secured 364 votes and NC candidate from Marwal fetched 178 votes.

Manzoor said that he along with his wife and other workers had the time and again approached officials for a polling booth in Monvij only; however, despite the genuine pleas, the administration turned blind to them.

“If Monvij is safe for programmes like Back to Village then why is it unsafe for installing the polling booth,” he asked.

He said that earlier during the campaigning also, the district administration never allowed his wife to got out for any kind of social gathering.

“Ever since we filed our nominations, we were allowed only twice for the campaign and that too for one to two hours,” he alleged.

On the other hand, he said, his BJP opponent used to be on campaigning every day. “Show me the day when our opponent did not go out for the campaign”.

The district administration, he said used to disallow them whenever approached. “On the pretext of security reasons, they used to allow BJP candidate but not us,” he said.

Manzoor also questioned the sincerity of the Government of India in ‘fostering democracy’ in Jammu and Kashmir. He alleged that the administration was using the security situation as a pretext to lock up candidates opposed to BJP.

“In our villages, there were people planted by the agencies who tried to boycott votes,” Manzoor alleged, adding “But what I don’t understand is, why did they announce boycott for us only,” he said. (FPK)