LAHORE, Sept 16: Various Kashmiri political and non-political organizations held a rally here on Monday to protest against holding of state assembly elections in occupied Kashmir.

The rally which was held outside the Lahore Press Club on the occasion of the first polling day of the elections was led by Kashmir Action Committee president Dr Muzaffar Shah and attended by representatives of various Kashmiri organizations.

The participants in the rally were carrying large banners and posters against the elections and demanding the boycott of the same by the people of occupied Kashmir.

The rally passed a resolution which said that the APHC had taken a right decision to boycott the elections asserting that the elections were not the substitute for the plebiscite which Kashmiris had been demanding for the past 50 years nor the elections could make any headway to solve the Kashmir problem. It said that various elections held in the state since 1951 had been rigged and the candidates of the government choice elected.

In the elections held in 1987, a group of Kashmiri youth called the Muslim United Front participated by getting a majority of votes but in the final counting they were declared unsuccessful. The Kashmiris were convinced that it was not possible to bring in any change through peaceful means and decided to launch an armed struggle against the Indian occupation of the state. The elections held in 1996 were again rigged. The people were dragged out of their houses and forced to vote at gunpoint. The APHC had boycotted those elections. Despite the use of force only five per cent of the voters had cast their votes.

Now again, the resolution said, the Indian government was staging the drama of elections in four phases starting from Monday. The APHC had appealed to the people of the state to boycott the elections. It had made it clear to the Indian government that the people would not participate in the elections. To prevent APHC leaders from persuading the people to boycott the elections, the state government had put many of them under house arrest and sent the top leaders like Syed Ali Geelani, Yasin Malik and Shaikh Abdul Aziz to jails far away from Kashmir.