Hitting the panic button after the killing of yet another colleague by suspected militants, dozens of Jammu and Kashmir’s recently-elected village heads and other gram panchayat members have resigned their posts in the past couple of days.
These resignations, announced through paid classified advertisements in local newspapers, are a grim reminder that nearly 34,000 village representatives elected last year in the state’s first panchayat polls in three decades are simply sitting ducks. The purpose of the exercise appears to have got defeated or at least faces a big challenge.
Government and police officials here admit the village heads and other panchayat members have been, unlike most MLAs, in close touch with ordinary people and truly the focal point of contact between them and the administration.
This could have really changed the tide in the state hit by years of militancy, an official said, noting this was precisely why they had become the target.
Senior separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s recent declaration that no one, including sarpanches, should be targeted over political differences doesn’t seem to have had any effect.