From The Presidents Desk January 2009  

Dr L N Dhar  

Dear Biradari Member,

Namaskar

I pray that the year 2009 brings you peace, prosperity and happiness. Personally, I am carrying a pain in my heart. Padmashri JN Kaul, a tallest stalwart in upholding the K P causes, has passed into history. His nirvana saddened the entire community To them he was Papaji His passing away has also, made orphan of the K.P community whose interests were dearest to his heart.

I lost in him a friend, philosopher, guide and mentor. I used to consult him when I was faced with intricate problems. When the going used to get tough he used to become tougher, stronger and cooler in solving the troubling issues. I used to invite him to all the important functions and deliberations of the Kashmiri Samiti Delhi. He would never say no. He supported my view that the recent elections in Jammu & Kashmir were of little consequence to the KPs.

The election results have corroborated my view that in the present atmosphere the Assembly elections are of no significance to the KPS and it is no solution to our problems. Therefore appropriate action was to boycott these The response of the community to the boycott call given by KSD was tremendous and 99.9% of the Biradari stayed away from these elections. I congratulate my Biradari and express my sincere thanks to them for the support given to the KSD boycott call.

As per official records only 2-3 thousand displaced people from our community registered themselves for casting their votes in Delhi and Jammu. Most of these were bogus votes and it was manipulated by a group of people who managed to register voters by using unfair means, otherwise you would not find even a few hundred votes there.

We are completing 19 years of exile now and during this period number of elections were held in J&K Every time all the frontline organisation used to sit together and discuss the issue threadbare and most of the times we preferred to stay away as we understood the futility of such an exercise Our stress used to be on our rehabilitation and resettlement but this time some of our biradari. members jumped into the election fray and joined hands with those very people who were responsible for forcing us out of valley. What really prompted these people to take such an action raises a number of questions.

1. Was it a conspiracy of Government to involve KPs in the election process by giving them incentives and favours to close the chapter of migration?

2. Can we defend our argument of creating conducive atmosphere in the valley as precondition of our return when there was absolutely no violence during election in which there was free and fearless campaigning by KP candidates in the entire valley including far flung areas .

3. Some of the candidates were sponsored by various KP organisations and they issued appeals in newspapers to vote for their candidates in full strength. When results were declared the votes polled by them were between 50-150. It is clear that the decision of these organisations was not accepted by the KPs. This is for the community to understand whether such KP organisation do really represent any section of the community. Obviously Not

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Courtesy: Dr L N Dhar and  January 2009 Koshur Samachar