NEW DELHI: An Indian Sikh separatist and a staunch opponent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi from disputed Kashmir were both set to be elected lawmakers from behind bars on Tuesday.
Firebrand preacher Amritpal Singh, 31, a Sikh separatist leader arrested last year after a month-long police manhunt in Punjab state, defeated 26 other candidates including 17 independents in Khadoor Sahib constituency.
Singh rose to prominence calling for a separate Sikh homeland known as Khalistan, the struggle for which sparked deadly violence in India in the 1980s and 1990s.
His mother thanked the voters for their support and “love” for her son, who won nearly 200,000 more votes than his nearest rival as an independent.
“I sincerely thank all the supporters from the bottom of my heart,” Balwinder Kaur told reporters. “Our victory is dedicated to the martyrs.”
Weeks before Singh’s April 2023 arrest, he and armed supporters raided a police station, after one of the self-styled preacher’s aides was arrested for assault and attempted kidnapping.
Singh has styled himself after Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, a figurehead of the Khalistan movement, who was killed when the Indian army stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar, a major Sikh site, in 1984.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot dead by two of her bodyguards later that year in retaliation for ordering the attack on the temple.
In another twist, the son of one of her assassins was also elected to India’s parliament on Tuesday from another constituency in Punjab.
Another jailed leader, Sheikh Abdul Rashid, a former state legislator in Illegally Indian-Occupied Kashmir (IIOJK), won a seat in the disputed Himalayan region by more than 200,000 votes.
He defeated Omar Abdullah, a former chief minister of the territory.
“I don’t believe his victory will hasten his release from prison nor will the people of North Kashmir get the representation they have a right to,” Abdullah said as he conceded defeat, in a post on social media.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government arrested Rashid — popularly known as Engineer Rashid — on charges of “terror funding” and money laundering in 2019.
Rashid’s son ran an emotional campaign on his behalf in northern IIOJK’s Kupwara constituency, defeating a candidate seen as close to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
He used a pressure cooker as his election symbol, seen as a representation of stifled political conditions in IIOJK after the 2019 change, when civil liberties were drastically curtailed.
Kashmir saw a 58.6 percent turnout at the polls according to the election commission, a 30 percent jump from the last vote in 2019 and the highest in 35 years.
For the first time since the insurgency began in 1989, no separatist group called for a boycott of the polls.
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