New Delhi: Aijaz Ahmad Guroo, the brother of 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, finished behind NOTA in Jammu and Kashmir’s Sopore. With only 129 votes, Guroo had 26,846 fewer votes than Irshad Rasool Kar who won the seat for the National Conference.
Aijaz contested the election as an Independent with a message of “peace and development”. His brother, Afzal Guru, was hanged in Delhi’s Tihar jail on 9 February 2013 for plotting the December 2001 attack on the Lower House of the Parliament.
Aijaz, who took voluntary retirement from the Jammu and Kashmir animal husbandry department in 2014, presently works as a contractor. His election campaign focused on door-to-door outreach, highlighting the plight of the Kashmiri youth who continue to languish in jails on “frivolous” charges and widespread unemployment in the state.
In the last assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir in 2014, Sopore elected Congress leader Haji Rashid as its MLA, with Rashid again getting the party ticket this election.
Considered a stronghold of separatists, Sopore has witnessed election boycotts by various sections in the past decades. But this time, it saw a multi-cornered battle between the National Conference (NC), Congress, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the Awami Ittehad Party (AIP), and Independents such as Aijaz.
Once militancy hotbeds, Baramulla and Sopore in north Kashmir recorded the highest voter turnout this election in 30 years, at roughly 60 percent.
A record number of Independent candidates were in the fray this election, held after a gap of 10 years.
At 365, the election saw the highest number of Independent candidates since 2008, when 468 Independents had contested. However, several political parties, such as the PDP and NC, called the Independent candidates ‘BJP proxies’ before the election — a charge the Independents have denied.
Speaking to ThePrint ahead of the Jammu and Kashmir elections, Aijaz revealed that his family has been requesting the government and reaching courts, with requests to allow them to visit his brother’s grave. Afzal Guru remains buried inside the Tihar jail complex.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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