Dooru keeps faith in Geelani, boycott Panchayat polls

Srinagar: Like assembly polls, the Dooru Village in Baramulla district, hometown of Hurriyat Conference (G) chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani stayed away from Panchayat polls. The boycott in the village was so much evident that not even a single candidate filed nomination for either panch or sarpanch posts. As the adjoining villages voted to elect their candidates, there was no polling process in the village where Geelani was born and people were busy with their daily chorus.  The octogenarian leader had once contested and won elections from Sopore before the insurgency against Indian rule started across the Jammu and Kashmir.  Today the veteran leader proposes plebiscite under United Nation’s supervision with many voices echoing the demand in his home town. “Plebiscite is also voting and if India claims to be largest democracy, why is it afraid to do especially when the country is so sure that Kashmiris want to be with it? Let us vote freely, and then see what we vote for,” a resident of the area told. The hometown did not vote in assembly polls in 2008 also. Then the picture was slightly different: poling staff waited for whole day for voters who kept giving them a miss throughout the day.