MIRPUR-AJK – Kashmir Council Europe (KCEU) Chairman Raza Syed Raza has said that the Indian people have rejected the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) extremist policies in the recent elections including in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
In a statement released to the media on Thursday, Raza Syed commented on the “surprising results” of the recent Lok Sabha (lower house) elections in India.
He said the outcomes show that the “bias and extremist politics” of the ruling BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi are “not acceptable for the Indian people at all.”
Regarding the election results in Occupied Kashmir, Syed noted that similar to 2019, the Modi government tried to “deprive the people of Occupied Kashmir of the right to self-determination” by abolishing the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. However, the Kashmiri people “voted in the elections against Modi’s unfair and undemocratic policies and biased behaviour.”
He stated that while the elections in Jammu and Kashmir are not equal to an internationally supervised plebiscite as per UN resolutions, it is important to note that India’s founding leaders, particularly Jawaharlal Nehru, had promised the Kashmiri people the right to self-determination, which has not been fulfilled. The KCEU chairman said the Modi government’s actions to change the demographic composition of Jammu and Kashmir by amending domicile laws have been rejected by the Kashmiri people.
He called on the Indian civil society and the international community to help the people of Jammu and Kashmir obtain their right to self-determination as per India’s promise.
