Jammu: Asserting itself as a "historic necessity", the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Sunday said the Jammu and Kashmir was poised for a genuine democratic contest, which would enable its people to choose their representatives on the basis of their performance.
"The state was poised for a genuine democratic contest for the first time in its history in which the people would have clear options to choose from on the basis of performance," the party patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed said while addressing a public rally in Bari Brahmanan, 35 kms from here.
He said the emergence of PDP as a credible regional force had ended monopolistic politics and introduced a much needed corrective into the democratic system of Jammu and Kashmir.
The former chief minister said democracy in the state had suffered in the past for a variety of reasons but one major deficiency was the absence of a credible alternative to the National Conference in Kashmir and generally adversarial national parties in most parts of Jammu.
Apart from providing an alternative for governance, the PDP could fill a major gap in state polity by connecting regions and communities across the state on a single political platform, he said.
"Till now unfortunately no party has been able to inspire confidence among all the stakeholders of our diverse state with everybody aiming solely for power and generally by creating fissures in society for vote banks," Sayeed claimed.
Interventions like the Sarva Shikhsha Abhiyan and RAMSA in education have not been able to make a difference in the lives of ordinary people, the PDP patron added.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, December 09, 2012, 19:00