Srinagar tense ahead of polling, security stepped up in separatist bastion

Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital and its neighbourhood are tense as these with southern districts of Anantnag and Shopian and frontier Samba are going to the polls in the fourth of the 5-phased Assembly elections on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the bullet-riddled corpse of village headman abducted by gunmen from his house in Hygam village of Baramulla district was found on Saturday in a field. Police said Sarpanch Ghulam Muhammad Mir, 62, headman of Hygam village, was shot in cold blood by his abductors near his house and blamed the gory incident on separatist militants.

A drive through the city on Saturday afternoon revealed large contingents of local policemen in riot gear with thousands of central police forces personnel have been deployed all over whereas more with polling staff were arriving in hired buses and other vehicles.

In particular, the old Srinagar city, the hot bed of separatist campaign and where the anti-India sentiment runs deep in the population and hence often witnesses ‘intifada-type’ street clashes between irate mobs and policemen, their presence in large numbers even in narrow and dark alleys had created a sort of nerve-racking situation. However, the officials justified such enormous presence of security forces saying this had been necessitated to keep “miscreants’ and other “trouble-makers” away and also, in the backdrop of separatists' poll boycott call, to infuse confidence among the voters to come out and vote.

Officials also admitted that a couple of hundred potential ‘trouble-makers’ including some known activists of various separatist parties and groups have been taken into preventive custody.

Also, their senior leaders including Mirwaiz Umar Farooq have been placed under house arrest “as a precautionary measure.” All the polling stations and booths after being declared sensitive and super-sensitive have been taken over by police and CRPF and at most of these poll staff with EVMs and other requisite material had already arrived by 4.30 pm on Saturday.

Srinagarites have to elect eight MLAs and, as in the 2008 elections when all were won by National Conference (NC), they will play a crucial role in government making. It is for that very reason that all political parties have during the campaigning tried hard to woo the voters in Srinagar with promises of making it most modern city. They also tried to convince them the boycott of elections by majority of its voters in the past elections has only deprived this city of over 1.5 million people of many benefits and kept it far behind from winter capital Jammu and even several smaller towns in development and fund allocation.

EC officials said that 14.73 lakh voters in 18 constituencies including Srinagar’s eight will decide the fate of 182 candidates in fray; the prominent of them being Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, and his Cabinet colleagues and senior NC and Congress leaders Ali Muhammad Sagar,Peerzada Muhammad Sayeed, Gulam Ahmed Mir and Mubarak Gul (Speaker of the J&K Assembly) and Opposition PDP patron and chief ministerial candidate Mufti Muhammad Sayeed. While Mr. Abdullah is seeking election from home constituency Sonawar in Srinagar, his political bête noire Mr. Mufti is contesting from southern Anantnag. Mr. Abdullah is also fighting the election from Beerwah segment in central Budgam, which went to the polls on December 9. The fifth and final phase of the elections involving remaining twenty segments of Jammu region is scheduled to take place on December 20.