JKLF chief Yasin Malik arrested
SRINAGAR :A day after Kashmir’s separatist leaders asked voters to desist from participating in the bypolls to Srinagar and Anantnag parliamentary constituencies, the government started a crackdown on their activists and arrested JKLF chief Mohammad Yasin Malik on Saturday.
The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JLKF)chairman has been shifted to central jail Srinagar on a 12-day judicial remand, a spokesman of the leader said.
“Until now, united resistance leadership had only called for a complete boycott and no boycott campaign has formally started but so-called rulers have started using military and police might to put curbs on resistance camp,” Malik was quoted as saying.
Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik have urged people to boycott the upcoming Parliamentary elections, saying it “provides India an opportunity to mislead world community”.
Malik said that civilised world has some norms with regard to the election process and according to these norms casting vote or boycotting it, is every ones democratic right. JAMMU:Close on the heels of chief minister Mehbooba Mufti’s demand for withdrawal of the “controversial” Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from “some areas” of Jammu and Kashmir, BJP’s national general secretary Ram Madhav, the man who had re-stitched the PDP-BJP alliance after Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s death, said on Saturday, “It is not out of fun that such laws are put in place in some states including the northeast.”
Fielding media queries here, Madhav said,“They are there because there is some necessity for such laws. When such necessity ceases by the efforts of the state governments, such laws shall also cease automatically. The state governments, therefore, should create such conditions that these laws should go (away).”
The BJP general secretary said this when reminded about the spike in terror activities in the state vis-a-vis CM’s demand for withdrawal of AFSPA from some areas of the militancy-hit state.
Madhav also trashed the call by separatists to boycott the Anantnag and Srinagar bypolls saying ,“There was nothing new to it.”
“They have done the same thing before. They do it all the time whenever elections are round the corner. And, we also do the same thing— ask people to come out in large numbers and take part in the elections and vote for the candidates of their choice.
Democracy is acelebration and everybody should celebrate it,” he said.
“We certainly want the people to come out in large numbers and take part in Anantnag andSrinagar bypolls,” he added. Earlier, briefing the media about the impending Lok Sabha bypolls and elections to six seats of the legislative council going to fall vacant next month, he said that he had come to get the feedback of state unit of the BJP and its partner PDP.
“We had detailed deliberations and have suggested PDP and BJP to hold parleys. The final decision will be taken by the party high command at the Centre. The BJP, too, has some votes (in Kashmir) even if they are less. There are some views of the party on contesting or not contesting the elections,” said Madhav.
He hoped that the party high command in Delhi will come out with its decision in a day or two.
On an Indian Muslim cleric and his nephew reportedly missing in Pakistan, he said that the Centre has been utilising all available channels including diplomatic channels to bring them back to their native land.
“Once they are back, everything will be known,” he responded to the reported abduction of the duo in Pakistan. CHANDIGARH: The Punjab and Haryana high court has sought response from the Haryana government on a petition challenging the zoning done under the state’s excise policy for financial year 2017-18.
The challenge has been laid on the ground that the government is allegedly promoting big cartels of liquor business and curtailing rights of small contractors through the “excise arrangement” announced in the policy. Excise arrangement is the term used for details about areas and reserved price fixed thereof under the policy. The high court bench of chief justice SJ Vazifdar and justice Anupinder Singh Grewal has asked the government to file an affidavit by March 25 explaining the decision-making process and produce relevant record on March 28, the next date of hearing. The petition was filed by Arun Kaushak of Sonepat and two others seeking quashing of Haryana’s excise arrangement declared on March 11, claimingthat it is against its own excise policy of 2017-18. Petitioner’s counsel Vivek Singla had told the court that the government had illegally created bigger ‘zones’ in place of earlier small ‘groups’ for auction of liquor licences.