Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Oct 1: Mounting a scatting attack on the BJP led Govt for announcing BDC polls while keeping the opposition leaders under detention, NPP chairman and former minister Harshdev Singh today said that democracy had been reduced to a farce in J&K.
In a press statement here today, Singh said that as per the prevalent practice and precedents, the opposition parties needed to be consulted and taken into confidence while taking any decision with regard to elections. Not only the said precedent was disregarded but the Govt chose to go ahead with the BDC polls without taking any decision with regard to detained opposition leaders and without restoring their democratic rights, he said.
NPP leader lamented that liberal democracy which was the hallmark of the Indian constitution had been supplanted by pseudo democracy in the present authoritarian regime having no place for opposition spectrum of opinion. Amidst politics of coercion, intimidation, detentions and persecutions, the BJP wanted to score a self goal in an election which could most aptly be described as “I vs myself”.
Going all gun blazing against the ruling dispensation for disallowing political activity by opposition leaders, Singh described the Govt move as devious, totalitarian, undemocratic and repulsively bizarre. “The rulers seemed to have lost all semblance of propriety, rule of law and democratic values. And whom would the so called “elected candidates” represent in a situation wherein the BJP alone had a free play? ” questioned Singh.
Taking a pot shot at BJP, Mr Singh said that though it had not achieved much success in its proclaimed objective of “cash-less” and “paper-less” society but it had surely succeeded in ensuring an “opposition-less” election, which could be “voter-less” also given the present scenario in Kashmir.
Asserting that the massive mandate to BJP in Lok Sabha elections was being used by the party to extinguish the democratic chatter in the State, Harshdev Singh appealed for personal indulgence of President and ECI to save constitution and rule of law in the state torn apart by reckless political moves of the present regime.
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