New Delhi, July 13, IRNA,India has said the elections held in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) showed lack of credibility.

The situation in Gilgit-Baltistan, the other part of POK, was even worse as it had never even had a "semblance of representative institutions."
Elections have never been held in those areas and its residents have never enjoyed the basic political right to vote, said Navtej Sarna, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs in a press briefing here Wednesday evening.

"Once again the entire exercise shows the lack of credibility in the electoral process" in POK, the spokesman said, adding that real power was in the hands of the officials of Pakistan and the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs in Islamabad.

He pointed out that nominations made earlier for 30 out of 31 candidates of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front--Amanullah Khan (JKLF) had been rejected after they refused to sign the declaration of Kashmir's accession to Pakistan.

The `Azad Jammu and Kashmir' (AJK) Election Commission also rejected 30 nominations of the All Party National Alliance, a coalition of other pro-independence parties of Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

Besides disqualifying all political parties and candidates who failed to meet the condition of declaring their allegiance to the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan from contesting the elections, Pakistan had also not allowed international observers to monitor the election process, the spokesman said.

The elections could therefore, neither be called free and fair nor an exercise in self-governance, he added.

He said the 14-member AJK Council, the upper house of the AJK Parliament, is headed by the Pakistani prime minister as chairman and the AJK president as vice-chairman.

Islamabad nominates five members to the council from members of the Pakistan National Assembly and it has three ex-officio members.

The chairman, along with the federal nominees, gives the government of Pakistan a majority in the council as out of the 14 members there are only six members elected through the AJK Assembly.

"Real power thus rests with the officials of Pakistan and the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs in Islamabad," the spokesman concluded.