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'Majority in APHC opposed to contesting elections'

Srinagar May 20. The All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) chairman, Abdul Gani Bhat, today admitted for the first time that there were differences within the 23-party conglomerate over the election issue with some members favouring participation in the coming Assembly polls.

``Some members, not within the executive council, are in favour of participating in the poll process so that a resolution can be passed declaring independence from India,'' Mr. Bhat said at a seminar organised to mark the tenth death anniversary of Mirwaiz Moulvi Farooq here.

Mr. Bhat said the majority, however, opposed the idea and the executive council which met and discussed the subject in detail had rejected it.

``We have told our constituents that participating in the elections means accepting that Kashmir is an integral part of India. We reminded them that Sheikh Abdullah was sent to jail when he challenged the Indian authority on Kashmir in the early 1950s, while the autonomy resolution was outrightly rejected by the Centre last year,'' he said.

It was also not morally right to take oath and say that Kashmir was an integral part of India on the one hand and declare independence later in the Assembly.

Despite different constitutions all the constituents are united and their final goal is freedom, he said, adding that there were no differences on this.

``It is the people of Jammu and Kashmir who have the ultimate right to decide whether to remain with India, merge with Pakistan or form an independent country,'' he said.

Earlier, speaking at the function the former chairman of the Hurriyat Conference, Moulvi Omar Farooq, said war between India and Pakistan would never help to resolve the Kashmir issue.

``War will in fact prove disastrous for both the countries,'' he warned and said that India had more responsibility to defuse the crisis. Kashmir is a political issue and it needs to be resolved politically,'' Mr. Moulvi Omar said. — UNI

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