Voting for 90 assembly seats of Jammu and Kashmir will be held in three phases i.e. on 18, 25 September and 1 October. While the results will be declared on 4 October. Political developments have intensified before the elections. In this sequence, PDP President Mehbooba Mufti released her party’s manifesto in Srinagar. She said that we want reconciliation and dialogue. We want people-to-people contact across the LoC. We want the route to Sharda Peeth shrine in PoJK to be opened so that Kashmiri Pandits can go there.
Mehbooba Mufti announced in the manifesto that if we come to power, we will provide 200 units of free electricity. Along with this, the old pension scheme will be implemented. The recruitment process will be expedited. The honorarium of contract teachers will be increased. We will provide free legal aid to people in jail. We will provide free electricity to temples, mosques and gurudwaras. We will increase the honorarium of contract teachers.
Mufti said that we will try to lift the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami and hand over their properties back to them. She said that I request the Union Home Minister to resume trade across the LoC.
The PDP president said that Article 370 was a bridge between Jammu and Kashmir and the rest of the country, but that bridge is now gone. The BJP government has put the separatists in jail. They should remember that their own leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani had met Yasin Malik, Shabbir Shah and Mirwaiz Farooq. Putting them in jail is not a solution, the Kashmir issue is still alive, otherwise Engineer Rashid would not have won.
She said that solving the Kashmir problem is more important for me than forming a government. If NC and Congress support our manifesto and express their willingness to implement it, I will leave all the seats for them. However, she also said that there is no question of joining hands with BJP again. We had formed an alliance with the BJP government in 2014. Our alliance was based on the Agenda of Alliance. They had promised that they would not touch Article 370.