DNA 
 
ISLAMABAD, Dec 29: Pakistan has rejected elections in Jammu & Kashmir as a fraud on the “subjugated” people and conducted after converting the territory into a “fortified army camp”.

Approached for comments, a foreign office spokesman in Islamabad said the Indian government’s “farcical” attempt to dupe the international community into believing that the people of Jammu & Kashmir were free to elect leaders, have simply failed because almost all major political parties representing the Muslim majority, especially the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), boycotted the polls.

The foreign office spokesman alleged that over half the state’s voters honoured APHC’s boycott call. He hoped that the liberation movement in the “occupied” Valley
would continue to its logical end.

Similar views were expressed by Rawalpindi-based Syed Salahuddin, supreme commander of the United Jehad Council or Muttahida Jehad Council. Salahuddin said the entire APHC leadership was put behind bars before the elections and the election results had zero credibility as a majority of Kashmiris boycotted the exercise as a farce.

He alleged over 8,000 Indian securitymen forced people to vote and many resorted to
double voting.

Salahuddin said that the Kashmiri people’s liberation struggle would continue and the elections would have no bearing on it.

The chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir and a top leader of the PPP-led ruling coalition in Islamabad, Maulana Fazalur Rehman, called the elections “ridiculous”.