Why people of terrorist background Should be disqualified to contest polls

With 10-15 MLAs of separatist background, J&K Assembly pandemonium today would have been on Azadi, Plebiscite

Srinagar: In the last 52 years, pro-Pakistan Jamaat-e-Islami made two concerted efforts to enter the Indian democratic system for furthering its secessionist agenda.
In cohorts with Indira Gandhi’s Congress party, JeI managed to field 22 candidates in the Assembly elections of 1972. These were the days when the Returning Officers would reject the nomination papers of all the opposition candidates who had some potential of getting a sizable vote.
Of the 22 JeI candidates, 5 were declared elected from Sopore, Tankipora (today’s Habbakadal), Khanyar, Nandi (today’s Anantnag West) and Kulgam. These were the days when Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was in jail for his slogan of Plebiscite and his Mahaz-e-Rai-shumari would boycott all Indian elections.
Congress supported JeI for a quid pro quo. It wanted to marginalise Sheikh and his Raishumari movement while creating bulwarks. For that purpose, it permitted and encouraged JeI to contest the elections and conceded 5 seats to the organisation.
The second well-coordinated attempt was in 1987 when JeI got a number of the anti-National Conference parties under one umbrella of the Muslim United Front (MUF) to contest the elections. Only four of them were returned. JeI and its subsidiaries levelled allegations of “massive rigging” against the NC-Congress coalition, particularly the NC president Dr Farooq Abdullah.
In the next two years, Pakistan’s military ruler Gen Ziaul Haq intensified his ‘Operation Tupac’ with training and arming a large number of the guerrillas from the Valley. JeI and its multiple political and religious arms created an impression that the Kashmiri youths had taken to guns due to the “mass rigging” in the Assembly elections. The gun culture created in 1989 is still unrelenting and refusing to die permanently.
Later, in two of his media interviews, JeI leader and Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Mohammad Yousuf Shah aka Syed Salahuddin revealed that his organisation’s purpose of contesting the Assembly elections was only to enter the Legislature and pass a resolution for Kashmir’s azadi.
Even after 1990, JeI and other pro-azadi and pro-Pakistan organisations made some discreet attempts to hijack the Indian democratic system. Their handlers in Pakistan put them pitted against one another so as to trap the Indian deep State. It worked. Some of the senior politicians and bureaucrats and security and intelligence officers view the separatist “moderates” as their friendlies. They equipped them with every possible privilege and permitted them to abuse the Indian system and institutions.
The result was that the Indian political establishment limited its counter-separatist campaign to only the hardliners. Years later, the country realised that it had been tactfully trapped by the hostile agencies across the border.
Notwithstanding a host of lessons, a number of the people of separatist and terrorist background were encouraged and facilitated to contest this year’s Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. They included the political activists who were in different jails for charges of terror funding and anti-national activities.
Since the Representation of Peoples Act debars only those criminals who have been convicted with imprisonment of more than two years, there was no legal hitch in their contesting of elections.
A small group of legislators who created a ruckus in the Assembly on Thursday, trying to outsmart the NC-Congress coalition, waved banners to condemn the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019. Legally and constitutionally, they are within their right to raise a demand even if it buttresses the separatist or Pakistani narrative.
Today’s ruckus was only for restoration of Statehood and Article 370. One can only imagine the situation if the Kashmiris would have returned 10-15 candidates of a separatist or terrorist background. Most probably, today’s pandemonium would have been on the demands of Kashmir’s azadi and Plebsite.
Even as two legislators, namely NC’s Dr Bashir Ahmad Veeri and PDP’s Mohammad Rafeeq Naik, paid tributes to the former MLA and JeI leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani in the obituary references, all other members ignored the man who ran the most organised pro-Pakistan campaign for over 30 years and was the undisputed patriarch of all the big terror commanders.
The election of secessionist politicians, who are known as supporters of terrorism over the decades, has raised a question on the qualification of the candidates aspiring to contest the elections. Currently any MLA and MP of terrorist and separatist background is free to contest the elections and make rules on the qualification of the public servants.
No candidates allegedly involved in a separatist act are permitted to join a government service. But any legislator of similar background is qualified to contest the elections and become a lawmaker and Minister.

Updated On 11/8/2024 3:49:27 AM