PoK woman all praise for poll process
Shariq Majeed
Tribune News Service

Poonch, December 23
Sixty five-year-old Kali Bi's rendezvous with Indian democratic process while she was on 45 days travel document from Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) made her strongly envious of it.

Kali Bi, wife of Haji Sakhi Muhammad of Islamgarh in the Baag area of PoK, had come to India on a 45-day visit to meet her brothers in the Kallar and Sawani areas of Rajouri. Bi got separated from her eight brothers and mother Makhani during the 1965 war and moved to PoK along with her father.

She had come on travel permit and was to leave on the election day on November 17, but since the bus service was postponed by one day on that day she had firsthand experience of the election process in India.

“It is so nice to see all parties and candidates campaigning during elections, which here are more of festival. Candidates use different ways of campaigning. On the election day, the enthusiasm among the voters is phenomenal,” says Kali Bi, hours before she boarded the trans-LoC bus a day after the election. “It was a treat having seen the whole democratic process and I would never forget these moments in life”.

Asked how elections in PoK are different from those in India, Bi averred that there is “unseen fear” among the voters during the elections there. “The electioneering there is not so open. The enthusiasm among the voters is missing and instead there is fear of violence. In nutshell, elections there are held in such a way as if held under marshal law,” says Bi.

She sums up the difference in the election process in PoK and India with a one-liner, “It is more of festival here but there when the elections are held after five years, it is a compulsive ritual”.

“The process is a good experience for the candidates as well as the voters in India. It feels great that people from different religions participate in the whole process,” Bi says.

It was not only Kali Bi who cherished the election days here, but more than 50 persons from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir who were on travel document and left a day after the elections on November 18, after witnessing elections in this part of the country and were highly appreciative of the democratic process in India and its fairness.