ISLAMABAD: In a major leadership shake-up, veteran pro-freedom leader in Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK), Syed Ali Geelani, Monday handed over reins to his close comrade Mohammad Ashraf Khan Sehrai as the new chairman of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat (TeH).
Known to be pro-Pakistan, the 88-year-old Ali Geelani accepted the decision of the TeH advisory council (Shura) and voluntarily stepped down as its chairman as Sehrai was elected the new chairman of the 17-year-old pro-freedom party, which came in to being on August 7, 2004.
The decision in this regard was taken by the advisory council of the party, and the process was going on for last two months, sources revealed.
The frail and severely ill Geelani, however, would continue as chairman of All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) – an amalgam of over 22 pro-freedom parties of which TeH is the biggest party.
Sources in the TeH told Pakistan Today that Geelani had resisted several attempts from his near and dear ones as his two sons and even son-in-law wanted to succeed him as the new leader of TeH.
However, Geelani stood by principles and despite illness and frailty, he did not budge to emotional, domestic and family pressures. Rather, the old warrior stood his ground and followed the book to pave the way for a change in the party’s high command.
Sehrai is known to be a very principled and committed veteran of the resistance movement who always resisted all the temptations, threats and favours from the Indian occupying forces, as well as the puppet regime in Srinagar.
Despite continued harassment, detentions and house arrests, Sehrai never stepped back even an inch from the principled stance of the merger of Kashmir with Pakistan after a plebiscite under United Nations auspices.
Sehrai’s journey started as a basic member of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in the 1950s from his native Tikkipora village of Kupwara district on the Indian side of Line of Control (LoC). Geelani had joined JI a few years before Sehrai but both worked shoulder-to-shoulder with each other later on.
Father of four sons and two daughters, Sehrai held many positions in in Jamaat-e-Islami and eventually along with Geelani in 2004, formed TeH after reaching an agreement with then JI leadership that Jamaat would supply human resource to the new party.
“Geelani has not been keeping well so he called the meeting of Shura and a process was adopted to elect his successor,” sources in TeH told Pakistan Today, requesting not being named.
The sources said that Hurriyat elects its chairman for a period of three years and elections to the top post were overdue since August 2016. “We could not hold elections due to a massive anti-India uprising in the IoK and the subsequent arrests of our basic party members.”
According to reports, the party said that TeH has over 1,000 basic members who directly vote to elect the chairman. “Hundreds of our members including top leaders are behind bars.”
In November 1986, Mohammad Ashraf Khan, alias Sehrai, was released from Central Jail Jammu after serving one-year detention under Public Safety Act (PSA) for “talking about freedom of Kashmir”.
All of them will take that plegde to grave
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