From the streets of Kashmir, the political war will soon be taken to cyberspace. Political parties are now trying to woo the English-speaking population of the world on the internet by launching websites that will put across their point of view.In a few weeks the National Conference will be launching a website which will display, among other things, its autonomy document. The PDP is likely to follow suit in a few months. Its website will highlight the demand for demilitarisation of the region.But the mainstream parties have been lagging. The moderate separatists have already had their websites for some years. The Hurriyat website (hurriyat.net), which was not functional for some time, was relaunched this February. Earlier this year, Sajjad Lone of the People’s Conference put on the internet his vision document for Kashmir (achievablenationhood.com).The National Conference website (jknc.org) is being designed by Gaggan Virmani, an information technology expert and schoolmate of party president Omar Abdullah. He says it’s almost ready for launch; only some pictures of historical importance remain to be uploaded on the site.“There is a treasure of documents and pictures about my grandfather Shiekh Mohammad Adbullah and the party, which we are trying to get from international photo agencies and our own party archives. The rest is ready,” said Abdullah, himself a computer buff.The National Conference website, he said, will be interactive, with a blog, message board, responses from the party president. There will be links to documents such as the autonomy report.“Feedback from people is important and our aim is to dispel misconceptions about our party — past and present — besides present information about our day-to-day work,” he said.The PDP is likely to launch its website soon, “but we don’t have any fixed date for the launch,” said Mansoor Hussain, the party spokeman. Though the party leadership refused to give any details about the website, the spokesman said the website will have PDP’s self-rule formula, demilitarisation plan, party documents, agenda, goals.“All major parties have websites, so it was high time we did as well,” said Hussain.The separatist websites, however, have made much progress since their launch. The All-Party Hurriyat Conference website has already had nearly 1,20,000 hits. Sajjad Lone says his “vision document” gets 100 hits per month.“The response was more than expected. We are soon having a website for our party with the party flag as the backdrop,” said Lone, a computer-savvy politician who likes to carry his Compaq laptop around.
