Bureaucrat-turned-politician Shah Faesal’s Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Movement (JKPM) and former independent legislator Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittihad Party (AIP) have joined hands to set the foundations for a third front ahead of the Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir. Uniting under the banner of Peoples’ United Front (PUF), the agenda of alliance (AoA) of the new political amalgam “promises to pursue and facilitate the resolution of Kashmir issue”. “In view of prevailing political circumstances in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, Awami Ittihad Party and Jammu and Kashmir Peoples’ Movement have decided to enter into a pre-poll alliance under the banner of Peoples’ United Front,” JKPM chairman Javeed Mustafa Mir announced at a press conference in Srinagar. “The alliance has been necessitated by the ongoing political uncertainty in the state, apprehensions with regard to assault on the special status, and absence of any credible political alternative that could address both political vacuum and absence of good governance,” he said. While the alliance has focused on the political aspect of the state and the protection to its special status, its slogan is for good governance in the state. “There was a need of having a broad-based agenda of like-minded people who can take the state out of trouble, ” Rashid said.
