Srinagar, April 22, 2019 (PPI-OT): In occupied Kashmir, the High Court Bar Association has reiterated its stand that holding of elections in the disputed territory is no solution to the Kashmir issue or a substitute to the right of self-determination guaranteed to the people of Kashmir by the UN Security Council as also by the Indian leaders, both inside and outside the Indian Parliament.
The Bar Association in a statement issued in Srinagar maintained that from October, 1947, the people of Kashmir had been offered and promised a plebiscite, in the first instance by India represented by Prime Minister Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru and Lord Mountbatten, the then Governor General of India and thereafter, by a stream of resolutions passed by the United Nations.
Pt. Nehru repeated his promise in his letters to Pakistani Prime Minister, broadcast it to the Indian people and made an impassioned speech in Srinagar, soon after the military had bedded in and around Kashmir. In his letter to British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Pt. Nehru said: “I should make it clear that question of aiding Kashmir in this emergency is not designed to influence the State…. to accede to India… the question of accession must be decided in accordance with the wishes of people and we adhere to this view….”
As per the statement, “The Bar Association feels that plebiscite is a sacred value in the emancipated world society and is respected and regarded so and has been implemented in several parts of the world by United Nations itself and in determining the question of sovereignty of any country the interest of population concerned have been given equal weight because it is the people who determine the destiny of the territory and not the territory which determines the destiny of the people.”
It is, therefore, better for Indian Leadership to understand the ground reality of Kashmir and not to resort to the off repeated futile exercise of holding elections, one after the other, in J and K apparently to strengthen the Indian hold on Kashmir, as it has yielded in no results in the past and will yield none, in future as well.
Meanwhile in a meeting, the Executive Committee members of the Bar Association, expressed serious concern over the deteriorating health condition of Mohammad Yasin Malik, JKLF Chairman, who is on a hunger strike for the last 12 days and is lodged in a hospital in handcuffs, where he is not even taking lifesaving drugs, which are essential for his very survival.
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