SRINAGAR: Former panchayat members have asked regional parties to stop politicising over the upcoming urban local body and panchayat elections and resign from the assembly and parliament if they were sincere.National Conference, which recently won 10 seats in Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (Kargil), decided not to participate in the elections.“Panchayat election is a community exercise and not a political exercise.These parties are politicising the issue. They don’t want to share power. “It is for government to provide security to all of us if they announce elections. PDP has demanded that the governor should have called for an All Party meeting before announcing the decision to conduct polls The state administration under Governor Satya Pal Malik said that it would hold the four-phased municipal polls from 1 to 15 October and the eight-phased panchayat elections from 8 November to 4 December. Panchayat elections were scheduled in June 2016, but the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani and subsequent five month long political protests derailed all the processes.The government was also unable to conduct parliament elections in south Kashmir since April 2017 till now.

Source: Economic Times September 07, 2018 23:48 UTC