Strange though it may sound, the block development council elections on “party lines”, as announced by the J&K state election commission Sunday, are to be held on October 24 though the state’s political parties were forced into slumber after the August 5 announcements altering the constitutional status of J&K, and thousands of their leaders arrested.
The state has also been under lockdown, with practically every road and alleyway in every town crawling with soldiers or policemen. Therefore, unless normality returns by polling day, elections will be held in a climate that won’t allow proper canvassing, mobile communications don’t exist, and public transport is off the roads.
In October 2018, sham panchayat elections were held in the state. In large numbers, outsiders were made candidates — through incentives or by being placed under duress — in rural areas, and generally won uncontested. Mostly they had to file nominations in secret so that locals didn’t find out. It’s these practically unelected members of panchayats who will now elect BDC chairmen who will team up with area MPs and MLAs to draw up development plans and extract state funds. Much of this will in all likelihood be pocketed by undeserving persons who may have been incentivised or coerced into participating in openly fraudulent elections by those in authority. If the panchayat polls were a blot on democracy, the BDC elections could be a bigger mockery. If violence results in the process, it shouldn’t cause any surprise.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was still in New York last week, the US state department practically issued a demarche demanding that India lift repression in Kashmir and hold elections. It didn’t specify what elections. Perhaps the BDC polls are to comply with US expectations. BDC polls haven’t been held in Kashmir since the militancy of the late 1980s.
