A Grenade And A Vote: Ten Years Apart

Here's an account of the elections in Jammu and Kashmir, which concluded yesterday and that held a decade ago by ETV Bharat's Mir Farhat, who was on spot both times.

Palhalan (Jammu and Kashmir):The Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir held after a decade concluded on Tuesday with 61.30 percent of votes cast in the last phase.

The third and the last phase was held in 16 assembly constituencies of Kashmir and 24 constituencies of Jammu. Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha described the conclusion of elections as "peaceful, fair and a new chapter in the history of Jammu and Kashmir."

In Kashmir, the Pattan assembly constituency of Baramulla district, which witnessed boycott and violence in the previous elections, voting was going on peacefully like other segments that polled in the three-phase on October 1.

I have a vivid and unforgettable memory of covering elections in Pattan constituency in May 2014, when parliamentary elections were held in Baramulla parliamentary seat. I and two other journalist colleagues had a narrow escape in those polls.

Ten years ago on May 7, I was reporting inside a polling station in Palhalan, which was considered a hotbed of militants and protests. I was working in a regional English daily newspaper and was deployed to cover the parliament elections in Baramulla.

I went inside the polling booth to collect the figure of voters and votes cast. The booth was set up inside the Government Boys Higher Secondary School, Palhalan. Outside and inside the polling station, paramilitary forces outnumbered everyone - voters, polling staff. There were no queues of voters. It was all security forces and fragile calm.

As I was noting down the details, I heard an explosive sound. The polling staff started hiding under the wooden chairs and benches. In a flash, the paramilitary personnel entered the same room and hid with the staff. I enquired from a CRPF personnel what the bang was about.

"A grenade was lobbed that hit the brick fencing of the school," he replied, but in an angry tone added with an invective.

The female staff cried out of fear and began weeping. As fear had gripped the premises and all were praying for the safety of their life and no more explosions, no one tried to gather courage for any reassurance. A grim and pensive silence took over the whole school premises and no one dared to move or confirm what next is going to happen: An encounter, more explosions or voice of ambulance sirens. Nobody had any clue!

After ten minutes of pensive atmosphere, army and paramilitary personnel rushed into the school premises. It looked like a crackdown on the polling station. The noise of boots and clamour of the men in uniform outside the classroom, we were hiding, was a sign of reassurance and fear.

An Army and a CRPF commandant inquired if we all including the CRPF personnel were fine. We came out of the room and showed our identity cards to them and they let us go.

Our third colleague had not entered the polling station but had preferred to stay outside. We could not connect with him for half an hour. We inquired from the paramilitary forces, who had ghearoed the school, about him, but they had no idea.

Amid the fearful atmosphere in Palhalan, we could not find any civilian except the security forces dotting the roads and streets. We wanted to rush away from Palhalan, but could not until the third colleague would be traced. After half an hour of tense wait, he appeared from a lane.

Filled with fear and belief that we were safe, we didn't talk until we drove away towards Sopore, another volatile area then. As we covered booth after booth, the third colleague narrated his ordeal of what he had witnessed outside the polling booth.

Ten years after, on 1 October 2024, when I reached around 9 am at the same polling station in Palhalan, housed in the same government school, voters- men, women, young and old queued up to vote. Pattan constituency recorded a 67. 30 percentage of votes till the polling ended.

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