Asking over 33,000 Panchayat members not to resign under any militant threat, Chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Panchayat Conference [JKPC] Shafiq Mir said on Friday that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his National Conference-led coalition government would be responsible if Lashkar-e-Taiba or any other armed group attacked any panch or sarpanch in the State.
Reacting sharply to the purported LeT threat broadcast through handwritten posters in parts of the summer capital, Mr. Mir complained that the authorities had obediently gone by the Chief Minister's advice — 'security can not be provided to 33,000 Panchayat members' — and declined to provide police protection to the panches and the sarpanches being continually threatened and harassed by different guerrilla groups. "Police and CID officials are convinced that there is real threat to some of the panchayat members but they tell us plainly that nobody would come to our rescue after the Chief Minister's statement", Mr. Mir told The Hindu .
“We have already lost six members and dozens have been injured in armed attacks but the government has not taken any step to save the life and properties of the panchayat members and their families”, the journalist-turned-sarpanch from Rajouri district, who has lately joined Congress party, complained.
Mr. Mir said that the former Chief Gen (retd.) V.K. Singh's reported — but subsequently disowned — statement in October had remarkably added to the threat perception of all the panchayat members in Jammu and Kashmir. Gen Singh, according to some interviews, had attributed the highest turnout panchayat elections of 2011 to the Army's Technical Support Division.
With regard to the purported LeT threat, Mr. Mir said that the apex body of the panchayat members had "categorically refused to succumb to any pressure, whatever the consequences". Describing the threat "an act of cowardice" he said such attempts would never weaken the panchayat members' resolve and stand for democracy. "Such acts will expose them before the world how they were carrying out attacks on unarmed people". He exhorted on the JKPC members "not to succumb to any pressure and not to resign under any circumstances".
‘DGP unmoved’
The JKPC General Secretary Imtiyaz Beigh said in a statement that none of the panchayat members would resign under any militant pressure. He said it was strange that the government was protecting even the ordinary workers of the political parties but the threat to the panchayat members was being ignored or underplayed. He said that his predecessor Anil Sharma had submitted a written request to the Director-General of Police Ashok Prasad in November 2012, seeking protection for the much-threatened panchayat members but the police headquarters had remained unmoved for over a year.
“This is shameful on the part of the State police. The DGP knows that six panchayat members have been killed but still his police force did nothing for us. We are not only deceived by the state government but also by the union government. Both have left us to the mercy of the militants,” Mr. Beig said.
