“Regardless of what the extremist elements of both sides want the world to believe, there is still hope for the Valley and Kashmiriyat,” said chief minister Omar Abdullah in a tweet soon after Aasha Jee became the first Kashmiri pandit woman to be elected a panch from the Muslim-majority Valley on Monday night.
He was quite contented and felt exalted particularly at locals having said, “We didn’t see whether she is a Muslim or non-Muslim as she is a nice lady. We gave her preference over Muslim candidates.”
Ms Asha, 59, defeated her lone rival Sarwa Begum, a Kashmiri Muslim, by 11 votes in the seventh phase of the ongoing Jammu and Kashmir panchayat elections. The village-level polls are being held after a gap of over a decade in the restive state. Despite a boycott call from hardline separatist leader, people have turned up in large numbers to vote.
However, the elections at places have been marked by a few violent incidents like the one reported from Machipora, Zaingeer outside the northwestern town of Sopore on Tuesday, when unidentified assailants shot and wounded a candidate identified as Ghulam Mohiuddin.