NEW DELHI, June 12: India on Monday questioned the proposed elections in Azad Kashmir and said reports of candidates being handpicked by Pakistan betrayed absence of democratic freedoms there. A foreign office spokesman said this while answering a question on media reports that Pakistan has disqualified the political parties and candidates who have failed to meet the condition of declaring allegiance to the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan.

“We have seen media reports…This confirms that the elections in the so-called ‘AJK,’ scheduled to be held on July 11, will be a replay of the earlier exercises, in which the people did not have the freedom to vote for political parties and candidates of their choice,” he said.

The move exposed ‘insincerity of Pakistan’s proclaimed policy that the future of Jammu and Kashmir should be decided by its people,” the spokesman said.

“This disqualification is particularly glaring in the light of the proposal made by President Musharraf of introducing self-governance in Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.

He added that elections in the Northern Areas had never been held.

“The forthcoming elections in the so-called ‘AJK’ underline the absence of any form of representative government in the so-called ‘Northern Areas’ …, the residents of which are deprived of even their basic right to vote, as elections have never been held there,” he said.