by Malik Nauman Feroz
SRINAGAR: Two constituencies of the district Pulwama — Pulwama II and Aripal — are going for elections in the third phase of the District Development Council (DDC) elections on Friday. A total of 16 candidates are in a contest in the two constituencies: seven in the Pulwama II and nine in the Aripal constituency.
For an electorate of 25,895, Pulwama II has three candidates from the major political parties, four independent candidates are in the fray. PAGD has fielded Jammu and Kashmir Awami National Conference’s (JKANC) Nazir Ahmad Pandit as its candidate, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Nazir Ahmad Dar, and Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party’s (JKAP) Abdul Karim Bhat are joined by the independent candidates Arsheed Ahmad Bhat, Javed Ahmed Bhat, Arif Amin, and Ashiq Hussain Bhat for the contest tomorrow.
In recent weeks, Kashmir politicians, particularly belonging to the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), have complained about having little to no space for campaigning. The candidates have not let this discourage them and have instead focused on doing whatever they can to get their message across.
Ashiq Hussain Bhat, an independent candidate unsuccessfully contested the 2008 Assembly and 2009 Parliamentary elections, is also in the fray. “I conducted door-to-door campaigns in various villages of my constituency without any security cover to get my message across,” he said.
Bhat has voluntarily retired from a government job about three years ago. He said he is fighting elections primarily for issues like unemployment and release of innocent youth. “I run a private school and half of its revenue I utilize on my social work efforts in the region,” Bhat complained.
Arif Amin a local youth activist is also in the fray. He relied on his mobile phone to conduct his campaign. “It is a fight for political space. We want to prevent the BJP and other communal forces and their increasingly repressive policies from gaining any political space in the region,” he said. Many people believe that he has ties with People’s Democratic Party (PDP) — one of the parties belonging to the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) — and that he is standing as a proxy for the PDP, despite the PAGD already having given its mandate in the constituency to JKANC’s Nazir Ahmad Pandit. However, he told this reporter that these accusations were baseless, and he was fighting as an independent candidate because he thought it was best for him to contest the election as an independent candidate.
In Aripal constituency, where nine candidates are in the fray, all the major political factions have fielded candidates. The contest here will take place between Manzoor Ahmad Ganie of PDP, Joginder Singh of BJP, Manpreet Singh of INC, and Abdul Salam Malik of JKAP and five independent candidates: Avtar Singh, Zahoor Ahmad Sheikh, Mohammed Yaseen Paswal, Abdul Rasheed Bhat, and Abdul Rasheed Gojar.
