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Kashmiri youth stones Farooq's son

Mukhtar Ahmad in Srinagar

It was his first public appearance in Lal Chowk, the city centre, where joyful thousands once greeted his great-grandfather and father. But for Omar Farooq, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abullah's son and the National Conference's candidate from Srinagar, the crowd had nothing but brickbats.

On Wednesday, Farooq, accompanied by scores of supporters and commandos, was being driven back from the returning officer's office when all hell broke loose. Soon as he reached Maisuma, sitting atop a vehicle in the bandh-hit city, a group of youths who were playing cricket on the road turned violent. They started with slogan-shouting against Dr Abdullah which soon escalated into stone-pelting.

The police intervened -- first with batons and then with tear-gas shells -- to prevent the people of the locality where Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Force chairman Mohammad Yasin Malik lives from coming onto the road in Budshah chowk. Fortunately, the incident stopped with tearful youngsters running helter-skelter in front of baton-waving police personnel.

The incident, however, has proved a major set back for Farooq's plans to woo the angry youngmen of Kashmir.

"I will mix with the youth and try to give them the feeling that somebody is there for them," he had said on Tuesday, "The youth has a great role in strengthening the nation."

Farooq's contest will mainly be with the Congress as the All Party Hurriyat Conference has called for a poll boycott.

Meanwhile, state government employees have announced that they would not perform poll duties in Kashmir. A delegation of leaders claimed that the police have arrested nearly a dozen office-bearers of various unions. The arrested have been lodged in the Kothi Bagh police station.

Union leaders have had discussions with the Srinagar deputy commissioner, who, they said, was adamant that they withdraw the boycott call.

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