With Kashmir’s political class reduced to “house guests”, provided with “CDs of Hollywood movies” and offered “bread of their choices”, in the Hotel Corporation of India owned 5-star Centaur Lakeview Hotel in Srinagar for over two months now, the government announced the Block Development Council (BDC) elections. Slated for October 24, the exercise is aimed at electing chairpersons for Jammu and Kashmir’s 310 BDCs – 168 of them in Kashmir. Unlike Panchayats’, this election is supposed to be on party basis.
Ideally, it is the easiest election that Kashmir can ever have. The entire electorate – elected Panchs and Sarpanchs – are living in five hugely guarded hotels in Srinagar within a radius of two sq kms, for the last more than nine months. The number is so thin that one can have a one-on-one meeting with almost everybody. Given the Kashmir situation, however, they are unlikely to be disturbed as the entire political class is in jail. The absence of NC and PDP – the main stakeholders of Kashmir mandate till August 5 - may eventually encourage these chosen people to have the BDC bosses within their own flock.
The BDC polls would be the second milestone in creating the Panchayat Raj System in Jammu and Kashmir, a state downgraded to a Union Territory (UT) in August. Of the three tiers of this grassroots development set-up, the elections to the basic tier – the Panchayats, was the 9-phase crucial exercise that concluded in December 2018. This “bloodless” exercise was the key highlight in pre-August Kashmir.
Bu hikaye Kashmir Life dergisinin October 06-12, 2019 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye Kashmir Life dergisinin October 06-12, 2019 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Before The Kabul Retreat
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FINGERS CROSSED
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Foreign policy expert and editor of HardNews magazine, Sanjay Kapoor believes that Taliban 2.0 has more legitimacy unlike in the past as it had signed a deal with the US and negotiated with other countries of the region, but the final verdict can be passed only after it manages ticklish issues involving half of its population, the women
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