Srinagar: National Conference (NC) vice-president and the former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Saturday alleged that the administration led by Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha was using police to force the winning candidates of Peoples Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) to join Apni Party.
“On one hand Prime Minister Narendra Modi and J&K LG Manoj Sinha boast of DDC polls and claim democracy has won but on the other hand, democracy is being discredited,” Omar said addressing a press conference at his Gupkar residence.
On the occasion, the NC vice-president played a purported call recording to show how the husband of a woman candidate from Shopian who had won was forced to “make his wife join Apni Party forcibly in lieu of getting her brother in law released from detention.”
“I don’t know the reasons on whose command this all is being done,” a visibly upset Omar said. “Winning candidates of PAGD are being threatened, humiliated and coerced to join Apni Party, which is a B-team of BJP.”
He said that if BJP leaders including its spokesman are beating the drums that democracy has won in J&K through DDC polls, why the “same democracy is being discredited by the administration which is using police to force the winning candidates to switch sides to Apni Party.”
He said that this is being, perhaps, done to change the verdict of DDC elections. “The process has been started from Shopian where NC’s former MLC Showkat Ganai and senior NC leader Shabir Ahmed Kullay have been kept under detention for no reason,” he said, alleging that “perhaps the price of setting these leaders free is to join the Apni Party.”
“This way democracy is being murdered in J&K,” he said. “I wonder if the Parliament and the Assembly have an anti-defection law, why the same is not being implemented in J&K and those switching sides being disqualified?”
He said the verdict of DDC polls was loud and clear that “people voted for PAGD” and the message is that “August 5, 2019, decision isn’t acceptable to the majority of people of J&K.
“I don’t claim 100 per cent people are with us but yes, the majority have voted against August 5, 2019, decision,” he said. (KNO)
