‘Ballot failed in ’87, Bullet has taken backseat, its time now to Boycott polls’
Faisul Yaseen
Sopore, May 10: The people of north Kashmir’s Sopore township, which goes to polls on May 13, Sunday said after testing the Ballot and the Bullet, they would test the third B – Boycott of polls.
Talking to Rising Kashmir in Sopore, 50 km north of Srinagar, Sheikh Muhammad Yusuf, a senior member of the Jamaat Islami said the people of Kashmir had showed faith in the ballot in 1987 for which they are still repenting.

“The Indian government and the India-backed local government rigged the polls and raped the credibility of the ballot way back in 1987,” Yusuf said inside the premises of Jamia Masjid Sopore at the entrance of which is a big bunker of troopers.
Going down the memory lane, Yusuf who joined the Jamaat in 1963 said that after the infamous 1987 elections, people were forced to take up the arms and answer the Indian oppression with bullets.
“With the ups and down in the resistance movement, the bullets have taken a backseat and now it is time for us to test the third B – Boycott of polls,” said Yusuf, whose son Sheikh Abdur Raouf, a Ph.D. scholar in Aligrah Muslim University was killed at Batote on the 294-km Srinagar-Jammu highway while on way back home.
“The Indian troopers slit my son’s throat and handed over his body to me in two parts. His skull was sent to me in a polythene bag,” he said but added that the Indian oppression can’t force Kashmiris into subjugation. “The more they oppress, the more determined we’ll be.”
Former Assistant Commissioner Revenue Noor-ud-Din Dand who now runs a shop selling hosiery items and ladies garments said that though his family is the sympathizer of the ruling National Conference, he would side with the people who stand for the poll boycott.
“How can you expect people to vote for the Indian establishment which set Sopore market and residential places afire 24 times in the past. People will never forget the arson of 6 January 1993 when property worth crore of rupees was set afire by the Indian troopers who also roasted 50 Kashmiri Muslims alive in the same fire,” he said. “majority of the people here are freedom loving so they won’t vote come what may.”
Muhammad Younis, a B.Sc. second year student said people who vote are fooled by the pro-India politicians by promising them jobs and development activities.
“These innocent people do not know that whichever government comes to power they have to provide jobs to the youth and amenities to the people. After all we pay crore of rupees to the government in the form of taxes. So if they provide us jobs, they are not doing us any favour,” he said. “Anyways people are not with the pro-India politicians. The President of Traders Federation Sopore Ghulam Nabi Khan who shared the dais with the incumbent chief minister Omar Abdullah before an election rally ahead of the Lok Sabha elections didn’t even cast his vote. These people work for pro-India parties just for solving their own problems.”