KL Report
SRINAGAR
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Sunday said that Kashmiris should take a cue from the voters in Pakistan and ignore future election boycott calls.
Omar Abdullah posted a comment on Pakistan Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim on his micro blogging twitter site.
Ebrahim had said after casting his vote in Pakistan that “When good people do not vote, bad people benefit”.
Omar Abdullah Sunday re-tweeted the Pakistan chief election commissioner’s comment on his twitter site and said, “Good reason for Kashmiris to ignore boycott calls”.
The state assembly elections are scheduled to be held in 2014.
Ever since the beginning of the separatist movement in 1989, separatist leaders have been calling for boycott of elections in the state.
While such calls had succeeded in bringing down the voting percentages in the Kashmir Valley alarmingly in early 1990s, people, especially those living in rural areas, have since been ignoring such poll boycotts.
The latest example being the panchayat polls held in May 2011 in which an overwhelming number of Kashmiris turned out to choose their village heads.
