Srinagar, June 8 (IANS) Seven village heads from south Kashmir's Pulwama district Friday announced they had resigned from their posts. District authorities would not confirm the resignations but elected village officials have recently been receiving threats from militants to quit office.
The seven elected village elders issued paid advertisements in two vernacular newspapers stating they had resigned from their posts.
'We have no official confirmation of this as none of them has submitted their resignation to us', said a district official in Pulwama.
Posters by a militant outfit have appeared at some places in Pulwama district in the last few days asking the elected village heads to resign from their posts.
There also have been sporadic separatist guerrilla attacks on some of the elected village heads in areas of south Kashmir during recent days,
On June 4, gunmen shot at and injured a village head in Keller village of Pulwama district.
On June 5, the 72-year-old father-in-law of a Sarpanch (village council head) was fired at by gunmen in Chak Badrina village of the same district.
On June 7, gunmen attacked a village nambardar (village headman) in Gufbal village of south Kashmir's Kulgam district.
An unprecedented voter turnout of around 80 percent had marked the Panchayat elections in the Kashmir Valley in 2011.
Following militant threats, scores of political activists had distanced themselves from mainstream political parties through paid newspaper advertisements in the 1990s when the separatist violence was at its peak in the Valley.
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