60-year-old Sarpanch shot dead

Srinagar: The poll-bound violence seems unrelenting as unknown gunmen Thursday shot dead a local politician at Wanpoo area of South Kashmir’s Kulgam district. The sixty-year-old Gul Muhammad Bhat, affiliated with the ruling National Conference, was at his hardware shop when  masked armed men approached him and one of them shot him from the point blank range,  eyewitnesses and officials said..

According to various eyewitness, Gul was lying in a pool of blood when his neighboring shopkeepers and some policemen reached the spot. He was removed to the district hospital but the doctors referred him to Srinagar hospital where he succumbed to grievous bullet injuries. “He had received two bullets in his chest and due to the gravity of the injury we referred him to Srinagar”, a doctor who attended Gul in Ananatnag said.

The killing comes a day after five phased Parliamentary election concluded in Kashmir Valley. At least three sarpanches and a numerdar (village head) were killed in south Kashmir last month. Meanwhile, Army, Special Operation Group of Police and CRPF cordoned off the area and launched a manhunt to nab the suspected militants.

Meanwhile the ruling National Conference Spokesman Junaid Azim Mattu has said that National Conference condemns in the strongest of terms the assassination of a Panchayat Member Gul Mohammad Bhat of Wanpoh Kulgam who was shot dead in an attack by militants this evening. Mattu said that Gul Mohammad Bhat was a political worker and activist who belonged to the J&K National Conference.

Terming the killing as an act of cowardice and barbarism, Junaid Mattu said “Bhat was a sixty year old elder who was killed for his beliefs. Bhat, a National Conference worker and Panchayat Representative was killed by cowards in an act of sheer barbarism today. The party stands with the family of the deceased in this hour of grief and loss”.

The killings have scared thousands of panchayat(village council) members and their respective heads who have long been demanding personal security guards at par with legislators. This is reportedly the seventh panchayat member who has been killed since the Panchayat elections were held in April 2011. Ghulam Mohammad Lone, 45, was shot dead by the militants inside his residence at Kulpora village of the same Pulwama district last year on April 08. He belonged to the ruling National Conference. Another Sarpanch was killed last year in January. The killings of panchayat members had triggered a wave of resignations across Kashmir.

The panchayat elections were held in Kashmir in 2011  after a 10 year long break with a record 80% turnout.  Around 34,000 representatives were elehted in the election which is only the third in 34 year old history of panchayat polls in the state.kk

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has in past condemned such killings and promised to step up the security for the village heads.  “It is necessary to put in place security measures to protect the sarpanches in the state,” he said on the sidelines of a “Students’ Parliament” organised by Maharashtra Institute of Technology, Pune, last year. However, Omar said there was a need to establish which elements were behind the killing, indicating the killings were the result of political rivalry rather than a militant action.

Despite suffering the worst security scenario the state’s fledgling Panchayat system has managed to stay on course. In December last, an overwhelming number of panches and sarpanches  defied threats and voted to elect candidates for the four Legislative Council seats under the Panchayat quota.  The polls for these seats were held after a gap of 38 years.

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