Left ~ Write

The significantly high voter turnout in the recently concluded seven-phase elections to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly has become the leitmotif around which all analysis of this event is being structured. This is not entirely misplaced given the large-scale public demonstrations favouring azaadi, or independence, in the Kashmir Valley in the middle of the year posed a question mark on the advisability of holding elections in the State. Even New Delhi had appeared to have doubts about convening elections so soon after the Amarnath agitations had exposed regional and religious fault lines in the State. The separatists, on their part, had seemed to strengthen sufficiently by that agitation to overcome their own divisions and unite again under a single All Parties Hurriyat Conference and had given out a call to boycott these elections. Read the rest of this entry »