Abdullah, Mufti boycotted Panchayat polls under Pakistan's pressure: Satya Pal Malik

Panaji (Goa) [India], May 23 (ANI): Goa Governor Satya Pal Malik on Saturday said that during his tenure in Jammu and Kashmir he had succeeded in holding panchayat elections, devoid of violence, despite the top leaders of the union territory not cooperating under pressure from Pakistan.
Malik served as the Governor of J-K till October 2019, following which he has taken over the same role in Goa.
"The Prime Minister had said that we will conduct panchayat elections in Jammu and Kashmir. I broke protocol and went to Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti's residence. They refused to participate under Pakistan's pressure. Terrorists also threatened yet elections were held successfully, Hurriyat boycotted them. But the elections were still held with record voting, barring a few places, and no violence took place during the elections," Malik said.
He also said that the then administration was able to do so because the people of the union territory had accepted the system, as it was benefitting them.
"We had conducted an exercise which revealed that close to 50,000 government jobs were lying vacant in the state. We had announced we will give jobs to 50 thousand Kashmiri youth. I hope that the government will give them to the people soon," Malik said.
Speaking about his tenure in J-K he said, "When I was the Jammu and Kashmir Governor, I opened the Raj Bhavan for everyone. All my advisors were tasked to hear people's complaints once a week. 95,000 complaints were received by my office, I resolved 93,000 of them before coming to Goa. People felt comfortable because of this, they felt it was their government. Thus, anger was low."
"We gave 52-degree colleges in one year, eight medical colleges, 282 junior schools were converted into higher secondary schools," he added. (ANI)