Kashmiri separatists divided over proxy candidate issue

“This is a contradiction which will harm the (Kashmir) cause,” Hurriyat Conference leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, told reporters on Wednesday.

Shabnum’s decision to contest polls from Kupwara constituency has come as a major embarrassment for her two brothers Sajad Gani Lone and Bilal Gani Lone who have been advocating a boycott of elections.

Geelani, who engineered a vertical split in the separatist amalgam last time over the issue of proxy candidates, sought a clarification from the PC leadership claiming that Shabnum and two other candidates were seeking votes in the name of the party.

In a quick reaction, Sajad Gani Lone swore by Quran, saying, he had nothing to do with those contesting elections and seeking votes in the name of PC.

He cast doubts over the intentions of Geelani to raise the issue at a time when PC was busy trying to keep people away from the elections in the state.

Shabnum, Sofi Ghulam Mohiuddin and Shiekh Abdul Rashid are contesting elections hoping to get the vote of People’s Conference, which is a member of the (separatist) coordination committee while the party leadership is calling for a boycott.

Sajad accused Geelani of being the biggest impediment in the resolution of Kashmir issue. “What Indian agencies can not do, Geelani can,” he said referring to the rift among the separatists.

He challenged Geelani to prove his allegations against his party and he will quit politics. “If he cannot prove, he should quit politics,” Sajad said.

Shabnum, a lawyer by profession and still single, does not get along famously with her brothers. She has been living in a separate house in Nishat area of the city after her father’s killing in 2002.

She said she joined the electoral fray following request by hundreds of loyalists of her father to contest as an independent to mitigate the problems of the people of the frontier district.

Five constituencies of Kupwara district are scheduled to go to the polls in the third phase on November 30.

Shabnum has said elections were not a solution of the Kashmir dispute but a means of good governance.

Entry of Sofi Ghulam Mohiuddin in the 2002 election from Handwara, a stronghold of Peoples Conference, was the basis for a split in Hurriyat Conference as Geelani parted ways in September 2003 and formed a parallel faction.

Despite clarifications from PC, a constituent of the Hurriyat Conference, that they had not put up proxy candidates, Geelani did not budge an inch from his stand and remained away till recently.

Sources in the PC said Sofi had fallen out with the Lone brothers soon after he was inducted in the cabinet of the Mufti Mohammad Sayeed-led government.