Srinagar: Several Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) workers were detained on Friday as they were trying to sit on a day-long hunger strike here to demand the release of Baramulla Lok Sabha MP and party chief Sheikh Abdul Rashid alias Engineer Rashid, police said.
The AIP workers assembled at the Sangarmal Shopping complex along the Maulana Azad Road where they had decided to hold the hunger strike after the district authorities rejected the party’s application for a sit-in near Pratap Park in the Lal Chowk area of the city.
Chanting slogans calling for releasing Engineer Rashid so that he attends the Parliament, protesting AIP workers alleged that the government neither releases their leader nor permits him to attend the Parliament.
The cops, who were waiting at the venue, bundled the AIP workers, including Rashid’s son Abrar, into vehicles and detained them at Kothibagh Police Station.
Before being taken away, Abrar told reporters that not allowing his father to attend the Parliament session was murder of democracy. He said on one hand the Centre does not allow his father to attend the Parliament, while on the other the UT administration forbids them from holding a protest hunger strike.
“Isn’t it a murder of democracy that a people’s representative is not permitted to go to Parliament? Isn’t it unfair that his party workers can’t draw attention to an MP’s plight?” Abrar questioned, adding that the district administration had denied them permission to stage a hunger strike in Pratap Park, prompting them to choose a different venue.
He said they would decide on the next program after due consultation with the party leadership, and if the administration allows, they will go on a hunger strike.
“Since the administration denied us permission to go on a hunger strike in solidarity with our incarcerated party president, we are unsure whether we will be allowed in the future as well. Any decision in this regard is subject to the approval by the administration,” he added.
The AIP said that the party cadres had planned to sit on a day-long hunger strike in solidarity with Rashid, who is starting an indefinite hunger strike in Tihar Jail.
Rashid was elected to Lok Sabha from Baramulla constituency last year, defeating Omar Abdullah, now the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, and People’s Conference president Sajad Gani Lone.
