October 11, 2002	Friday	Sha'aban 4, 1423

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NEW DELHI, Oct 10: Indian-sponsored elections in Jammu and Kashmir, applauded also by the United States, appeared to recoil on New Delhi on Thursday as they returned an emphatic verdict against the region’s two main warmongers, the National Conference group and the Bharatiya Janata Party, both partners in India’s ruling National Democratic Alliance.

A coalition of the recently-formed Peoples’s Democratic Party, which won 15 of the Kashmir assembly’s 87 seats and the Congress party with 21 MLAs, both votaries of talks with Pakistan, appeared headed to form a patchwork government. They are likely to get enough support from among 22 small groups or independents to clear the 44 seats required for majority.

The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference suffered the biggest blow in the Gandarbal constituency of Srinagar from where its party president and India’s junior foreign minister, Omar Abdullah, was defeated by a margin in excess of 3,000 votes.

Abdullah said his party would sit in the opposition. Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, Omar’s father, had advocated the bombing of what he claimed to be militant camps across the Line of Control, but later switched to the inevitability of talks approach with Pakistan.

The other major loser in the polls was Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which lost all its previously held seats except one, mostly to the Congress in Jammu.

Former Indian Home Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed of the PDP and the Congress party’s Ghulam Nabi Azad were in the fray for the chief minister’s job, neither having contested the polls. Both the parties have advocated peace talks with Pakistan as an absolute necessity for peace in Kashmir.

The BJP-National Conference combination, on the other hand, was seen by many international observers as having brought South Asia to the edge of a nuclear war earlier this year.

Most politicians led by Prime Minister Vajpayee sought to interpret the polls as an anti-Pakistan verdict because of an unexpected voter turnout. The All Parties Hurriyat Conference and other assorted groups opposing Indian rule in Kashmir did not participate.

A sole candidate from the breakaway faction of the slain leader Abdul Ghani Lone’s party appeared to be the only one to have participated in the polls without accepting the finality of Indian rule in Kashmir. He won the election.

In a message released by the foreign ministry in New Delhi, Vajpayee, currently in Europe, said: “The people of Jammu and Kashmir have given their verdict. And the winner, clearly, is India’s democracy.

“Both before and during the course of the elections to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly, I had stated that irrespective of which candidate or party won, the vote would be for India’s unity, integrity and democracy, it would be a vote for Kashmiriyat, and it would be a vote against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and Pakistan’s anti-India propaganda.

“Our stand has been resoundingly vindicated both by people’s enthusiastic participation and by the outcome of the polls.

“Before the start of the electoral process, we had pledged that the elections would be free and fair. This promise, too, has been fulfilled.

“Braving the reign of terror unleashed by Pakistan-backed terrorist outfits, and disregarding the call for boycott of the polls, the people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh participated in the elections in large numbers.”

Vajpayee sent his “hearty congratulations to the courageous and patriotic people of all the three regions of the state. I would also like to assure that the center would work in close cooperation with the elected representatives in Srinagar to fulfil the aspirations of the people”.