Geelani reiterates Panchayat poll boycott call

Srinagar: Hurriyat Conference (G) chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani Wednesday called for a boycott of the upcoming Panchayat polls, saying there was no moral justification for any ‘conscientious’ Kashmiri to participate in elections .Geelani said India had been using elections to “justify its military occupation of Kashmir.”“Right from 1947 up to 1987, India staged the drama of elections under the garb of running the state’s administration.  And to further our principled stand on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute through democratic means, we too participated in these elections.  But finally we realized that India’s claim of democracy was a farce and New Delhi relies on its military strength when it comes to Kashmir,” Geelani said in a statement issued to. “Though participation in these so-called elections doesn’t justify India’s military occupation of Kashmir, it does prolong our journey toward freedom,” he said, adding that even though “the farce of elections has had no bearing on the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir, and no Kashmiri participating in these elections turned an Indian at heart, India uses the participation of people in these elections as a propaganda for Kashmiris being satisfied with the military rule.”He said in 1987, the 40-year-old struggle of Kashmiris for freedom took a new dimension and the youth “wrote a new chapter in Kashmir’s freedom struggle with their blood.”“Over the years, elections were rendered meaningless and irrelevant during the long course of sacrifices, and there was no moral justification left for any conscientious Kashmiri to participate in these elections,” he said.Geelani said, in the presence of lakhs of armed forces in Jammu and Kashmir, the “farce of elections cannot be given a name of democratic process, but India is using this military operation as a weapon against our freedom movement.”