Two days after the Election Commission announced the by-elections for vacant panchayat seats in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, the National Conference (NC) has decided to participate in polls.

Through a letter to Jammu and Kashmir Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Shailendra Kumar, NC central secretary Rattan Lal Gupta has said that the party is a strong votary of democratic process and wishes to participate in the eight-phase elections starting March 5 in over 11,000 seats.A copy of the letter has been marked to the Chief Election Commissioner.

However, the party wants 'roadblocks' placed in its way to be removed so that it can campaign freely.

"For a genuine political exercise to happen, it isimportant that the mainstream political thought, which is a unifying force, isallowed to freely propagate and demonstrate its ideology," he said in theletter, adding that a political ecosystem needs to be ensured so that thedemocratic institutions become genuine and credible reflectors of the people'saspirations.

The letter also said that it is practically impossible for theparty to participate in the election when its top leaders, including itspresident Farooq Abdullah, vice president Omar Abdullah, general secretary AliMohammed Sagar, are in detention under the stringent Public Safety Act.

Gupta also asked the CEO to advice the party on how theseroadblocks that have been placed in the way of its participation can beovercome.

If the aim is to create conditions to exclude all otherparties except the BJP, then nothing more needs to be said but if the aim is tocreate a genuine culture of grassroots democracy, then the process adopted is adeeply flawed one," he wrote.

Therefore, the process of selecting candidates andcampaigning under the given circumstances is impossible, it added. Theelections to local bodies, the first democratic exercise after Jammu andKashmir became a union territory last year, will be contested on party linesunlike the last polls in 2018 when it was contested on non-party lines. Theelections would be held for electing 1,011 sarpanch and 11,639 panch acrossJammu and Kashmir, excluding some snow-bound areas, for which the schedulewould be announced later. Gupta said that his party firmly believed indemocratic rights of the people and their mandate to elect representatives atdifferent levels.