‘No Election Can Alter The Realities Of POK’

NEW DELHI: As expected, the elections to the POK legislative assembly saw Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Pakistan win 25 of the 45 seats at stake (8 more seats are nominated). The PPP won 11 seats and the PML(N) 6. Farooq Haider of the PML(N), who was ‘prime minister’ until now, claimed that the entire election exercise “was a farce intended to hoodwink the people”.

So what happens now? In this conversation on The Gist, Amb. Dinkar Srivastava, author of a recent book on Pak Occupied Kashmir titled Forgotten Kashmir: The Other Side of the Line of Control, looks at how politics could play out and how this would matter little to the people. POK is basically a battleground for the national parties that have delivered little in the past.

Amb. Srivastava looks at India’s options and seeks to explain why Delhi has been reluctant to play the POK card, if indeed there is such a thing.