Senior PDP leader and former deputy chief minister Muzaffar Hussain Baig has said that by calling for poll boycott separatists were doing no good to the people except helping National Conference as its is the only party that has always benefits from boycott politics.“It is an irony that while separatists call for boycott, the NC cadres enforce it on the ground as this party is surviving in the post-militancy era only because of boycott politics,” Mr Baig said while addressing a meeting of the office bearers of party’s Srinagar district unit.
The meeting was presided over by party president Mehbooba Mufti and attended among others by senior leaders Moulana Iftikhar Hussain Ansari, Mohd Dilawar Mir General secretary, Tariq Hameed Karra, Syed Altaf Bukhari and Naeem Akhtar.Mr Baig said by calling for poll boycott separatists were unwittingly helping NC and this has proved true throughout Kashmir valley in general and the Srinagar city in particular. “In 2008 Assembly elections also, NC managed to manipulate and rig results of most of the seats in Srinagar because of low voter turn-out,” he said and added that at some places in 2008 polls, some NC cohorts even resorted to violence to enforce boycott.Mr Baig said having turned the historic Srinagar city into a virtual slum through politico-contractor nexus involving family members of some ministers of the present regime, NC would now again try to bank on boycott politics to rig the polls in the city and ironically the separatists seem to have already started helping them in this regard.
He said Srinagar city had turned out to be the worst victim of NC’s monopolistic strangle hold for decades and except for making emotional exploitation of its residents the party had not done any thing for the city.Mr Baig accused the NC of enforcing death, destruction and darkness on city dwellers while themselves enjoying luxuries of power. He said the people can get rid of the exploitative NC regime only through democratic means and they shall have to become the agents of change in the upcoming polls to come out of the shackles of exploitation once for all.Reminding the present government of its pre-poll commitments with the people, Baig said the National Conference had promised to give round-the-clock electricity at subsidized rates and provide jobs to around two lakh youth, immediately after taking over. “Unfortunately, while we are now seeing round-the-clock darkness because of non-availability of electricity, on the unemployment front, the already employed are now being shown the exit door,” he said and added that there seems to be a complete chaos in the government with nobody bothered about the plight of the common people.Baig said whatever works were executed in Srinagar were taken up only to provide contracts to the kith and kin of ruling politicians, some select workers or to promote business interests of ministers and MLAs.
A typical example of this is the skewed bridge over Jehlum which was being constructed inspite of strong objections by experts, engineers and civil society. He said while this bridge would only further complicate the serious traffic problems of the city apart from spelling doom to The Bund which is a globally recognised land mark of Srinagar. “ Government went ahead with the project ignoring all sane advise as it feels brushing aside public opinion would not harm its interests in view of its expectation of wining the election by default as result of poll boycott, he added. “ NC could never insult public opinion like this if the people of Srinagar voted in large numbers to teach political parties a lesson like in other states”, he said.