Elections in Kashmir Draw Long Lines of Voters,
Kashmir’s
state elections continued on Sunday as voting took place in the state’s summer
capital, Srinagar, with unusually long lines at polling places.
Turnout neared 50 percent, election officials said. That was by far the
highest level since an insurgency that began in 1989 turned the city into a
ghost town on Election Day, with few people venturing out of their homes to
vote.
But the rise of Narendra
Modi, now India’s
prime minister, has scrambled the electoral calculus across the country. Voters
in Srinagar, like others in Kashmir in recent weeks, put aside the issue of
Kashmiri independence to ensure that Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party of Hindu
nationalists did not triumph in state assembly districts in the overwhelmingly
Muslim Kashmir Valley.
“We are voting to stop the B.J.P.
from coming to power and for local development,” said Asif Lone, 32, of
Srinagar, as he stood in line to vote. “This vote should not be considered as a
solution of the Kashmir issue.”
Although activists of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, a separatist
group that has long boycotted elections, marched and shouted anti-election
slogans, most people ignored them.
Kashmir’s upper-caste Hindus, most of whom now live in New Delhi and
Jammu after being driven out of the Kashmir Valley in the 1990s by extremist
groups, are still allowed to vote in Kashmir’s elections. And many Muslims here
feared that if they continued to refuse to vote, the Hindus, known as Pandits,
would provide a comfortable margin of victory in several districts to the
resurgent B.J.P., which has long had a difficult relationship with Muslims,
said Noor Mohammad Baba, a professor of political science at the University of
Kashmir.
“People might have thought that if they did not vote, the B.J.P. would
benefit,” Mr. Baba said.
But Sheikh Zaffar Ahmad, 35, stood on his balcony on the second floor of
his home and watched voters line up at a voting booth near his home. Mr.
Ahmad’s brother was killed during the insurgency, and the sight of so many
people voting in an election sponsored by India left him with mixed feelings.
“These lines don’t signify any betrayal, but an understanding that
people must vote to help the local parties instead of the B.J.P.,” said Mr.
Ahmad, who refused to vote. “But I hope people do not forget the thousands we
have lost in the last 25 years.”
There is one more round of voting scheduled. Results are expected before
the end of the year.
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