Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Aug 22: Peoples Conference chairman Sajad Gani Lone today said they will sit on hunger strike before the Parliament and other constitutional bodies if there is an attempt by the Government to change the electoral demography of Jammu and Kashmir.
Lone said this while addressing a press conference in Srinagar today. “The law (Representation of The Peoples Act-1951) is not a threat to us but the intentions of the Government are a threat to us,” he said.
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He said they neither accept the clarification issued by the Government of Jammu and Kashmir nor they reject it. “We will wait and watch and if there is an attempt to change the demography of J&K, we will go on hunger strike,” he said.
He said that he will not attend the all-party meeting called by Farooq Abdullah to discuss the issue of inclusion of non-locals into electoral rolls of J&K, saying they will support if anything concrete comes out of it.
“Politics apart, I have a lot of respect for Dr Farooq Abdullah. But the reality is that if the All Party meeting is taken seriously, the media would have no information about it,” he said.
He further said that “how much we pretend that everything is alright. We have been abusing each other almost every day.”
“I believe the outcome of the Government move with regard to the voters will not change whether we attend the All Party meeting or not,” he said, adding that “in future if Dr Farooq needs us, we will be just a call away, but Mehbooba Mufti desperate to retrieve her ground, will ask for All Party meeting, the time of Maharaja Hari Singh has gone.”
“If we have to do something serious, then it should be done without the gaze of the media. Doing anything under the gaze of the media loses its relevance and it means point scoring. I don’t want to be a point scorer. If something concrete comes out, then we will also support them. If they feel any unfavourable outcome on October 01, then they should also support us, ” he said.
Senior PC leader and former Law Secretary Muhammad Ashraf Mir said that Chief Electoral Officer’s assertions about inclusion of non-locals in electoral rolls of J&K are not supported by law.
“The law is clear that the person must be a habitual resident of that place for a considerable time. The service voters (members of armed forces) can vote only for their native constituencies irrespective of their places of posting,” he said.
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