On Monday an all-party meeting was held at National Conference (NC) president Dr. Farooq Abdullah’s residence in Srinagar over the “registration of new voters in Jammu and Kashmir. PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti was also present for the meeting.

The meeting was convened following remarks by the Union Territory’s chief Electoral officer Hirdesh Kumar on the addition of voters to the revised electoral rolls after which the Jammu and Kashmir’s Directorate of Information and Public Relations (DIPR) issued a clarification stating that there is no change in the special provisions for the enrolment of Kashmiri migrants.

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“There is no change in the rules regarding the buying of property and jobs in the Jammu and Kashmir’s government and no link to the representation of voters or otherwise,” it added.

Addressing the media at the end of Monday’s all-party meeting held at his high-security Gupkar road residence in Srinagar, Abdullah said, “They are saying the new voters would be 25 lakhs. It could be 50 lakhs, 60 lakhs, or even a crore. There is no clarity on this.

“Once the voting rights are given to the non-locals in J&K, everything including the identity of the state would be lost.

“We have, therefore, decided that the decision to give voting rights to non-locals will be opposed and resisted jointly by all of us.

“The second thing, which is most important, is that many political parties have not been provided security here. How does the government plan to protect the non-local laborers after they become vulnerable? Any decision regarding this should be carefully thought over,” he said.

Those who attended the all-party meeting in addition to Dr. Abdullah and his son, Omar Abdullah include Mehbooba Mufti of PDP, Vikar Rasool Wani, president of the J&K Congress committee, Vice President of the party’s J&K unit Raman Bhalla, Yusuf Tarigami of CPI-M, Muzzafar Ahmad Shah of Awami National Conference, Narinder Singh Khalsa of the Akali Dal, and Manish Sahni, president of Shiv Sena’s J&K unit. Sahni belongs to the Uddhav Thackeray group of Shiv Sena.

(With Inputs from Agencies).