J&K Assembly Elections 2024 – Daily Excelsior

Appu Singh
The Constituent Assembly began its deliberations on December 9, 1946. On that historic day, Sachchidananda Sinha, Provisional Speaker of the Constituent Assembly, while envisioning the constitutional structure of the world’s newest and largest democracy, quoted in his inaugural address the words of an eminent American. lawyer, lawyer and politician, Joseph Story:
“The structure was built by architects of consummate skill and fidelity; the foundations are solid; the compartments are both beautiful and useful; the arrangements are full of wisdom and order; and its defenses are impregnable from without. It has been reared with a view to immortality, if the work of man may rightly aspire to such a title. Nevertheless, it may perish in an hour through the folly, corruption, or negligence of its only guardians, THE PEOPLE. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit and intelligence of the citizens. They fall when the wise are banished from the public councils for daring to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded for flattering the people to betray them.”
As Jammu and Kashmir experienced its first electoral saga in a decade in Kashmir’s 47 parliamentary seats and in the 43 seats of the neighboring Hindu-majority region of Jammu, voters decided not to reduce the noble processes of our Indian Constitution to the standard. level of a carnival full of nonsense, cowardice and deceit. We, the people, have decided to exclude the average politician, who has the vile amalgam of lack of intellect, lack of character and lack of knowledge.
I believe that in the first and second phase of the elections, the voters realized that their ‘Union Territory, which was a glorious state’ cannot achieve anything without unleashing the energy of the common man. Democracy implies the cooperation of all observant citizens; nothing will ruin J&K if people take charge of its security and nothing can save it if they leave its security to anyone but their own. With this premise, J&K voted on October 1, 2024.
For almost a decade, when J&K was on the escalator of bureaucratic anarchy and corruption, we, the people of J&K, could not afford to remain frozen in disgust and dismay. We could not only watch the political developments with sadness. Uninformed people are often confused about the three different concepts, which have completely different connotations: equality, equality before the law and equal opportunity. The voters of J&K understand that equality before the law is the foundation of a republic. Over the past decade it has been painful to see a lack of equal opportunity, which is the foundation of social justice. Unfortunately! I understand that equality is only achieved in the graveyard.
When the people of J&K voted, they were adamant that it was not the ‘Constitution of India’ that had failed the people of J&K, but it was the bureaucratic leadership that was destroying the dreams of the ‘Dogra country ‘ shattered. Turning a blind eye to the gravity of the situation would only amount to inviting the forces of authoritarianism, and we, the people of J&K, thought that the peacock as the national bird could not be replaced by the ostrich.
We have chosen to appeal to all the exploitation we have faced since the last decade, and the rhetoric of post-Article 370 development in J&K: the story of a glorious state being denigrated to a union territory; diplomats from nearly fifteen countries arrive to attend the election voting, but the BJP did not have the courage to contest in all ninety seats in the assembly; more than 70% of voters stayed away from the polling booths in Srinagar on the polling day of September 25, 2024; the crippling inflation; more than ten lakh unemployed youth in J&K; a man named Dr. Manzoor Hasan from Shopian, with notable degrees, makes it to the viral reel, when he is caught selling dry fruits despite his degree due to lack of job opportunities; no new teacher recruitment in the last decade; fair and equitable recruitment for young people in the clothing of companies such as APTECH; the mess of public facilities; constant power cuts, with J&K having the capacity to generate 3500 MW of power and only 600 MW; the toll plaza gift; the new alcohol and drug center called Jammu; the exploitation of landless and small farmers in the name of anti-encroachment measures; assigned persons of the managed land have been left behind without any rehabilitation and compensation; the secure government jobs have been replaced by contractual jobs in almost all departments of the LG government; the unruly expansion of power of the lieutenant governor, who will not allow a cabinet agenda to be adopted without his consent, in accordance with the new amended law; the regularization of lakhs of daily wagers was a distant dream; the false narrative that terrorism is in control as Jammu emerges as the new epicenter of terrorism in J&K; the bitter story of smart meters and their bills; the scary property taxes; the anganwadi workers and their brutal wage stagnation; the defunct primary health centers; the dilapidated school buildings of remote villages; the Kashmiri Pandits of Jagti and their shattered dreams; the creepy story of the domicile certificates; The mystery of the Mata Vaishno Devi shrine stampede tragedy of 2022 remains unsolved even after a high-level committee formation and the reprimand of the Hon’ble High Court of J&K, when it questioned the J&K government that it had no money to to be paid to the contractors, why did it tender work in the name of infrastructure development?
Lest we forget the scams we have witnessed in J&K in the last decade: the water crisis and the Jal Jeevan mission mess; the chaos of Ayushman Bharat; the mining mafia; fire and emergency fraud; the sub-inspector failed to recruit; tampering with the Junior Engineer exam; the Financial Account Assistant exam disorder; the gun license fraud and the Saubhagya Scheme, the new durbhagya. Yes, we, the people, voted against the criminalization and commercialization of politics in J&K and the inability of the Center to provide moral leadership.
To my fellow residents of Jammu and Kashmir, we have inherited a wonderful heritage and we have the wisdom to cherish it. Our innate potential is far, far greater than our actual performance. A decade of administrative mess in the Union Territory – we have gained experience and we cannot miss the crucial significance of good governance. With the confidence that our elected representatives, our leaders whom we voted for, will not allow the pious land of Jammu and Kashmir to become a breeding ground of corruption, indiscipline, dishonesty and irresponsibility.
It was a profound statement when a famous writer, Somerset Maugham, said, “If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you often get it.” This applies equally to democracy. If people refuse to accept anything but the best citizens as candidates, it would usher in the golden age of our republic. Politics will never be cleaner and our economic future will never be brighter unless and until our citizens are willing to give of themselves to the country from which they emerged.
(The author is spokesperson of AAP in J&K)