He was accompanied by District President Srinagar Irfan Mattoo, Political Secretary to the President Tasaduq Yaseen, Deputy Spokesperson Salman Bukhari and District Spokespersons Bisma Mir and Mir Aarif.

 

Imran opened the presser by posing a pointed question to the people of Jammu and Kashmir: how many times will Kashmiris be betrayed and who are the real conspirators behind these repeated betrayals? He said the People's Conference had called the press conference with the sole objective of exposing those who publicly oppose the BJP while privately working in their favour.

 

He began by congratulating journalist Umar Maqbool for filing an RTI through the Assembly Secretariat that has since become the central piece of evidence in the controversy. The RTI reply, Imran said, is unambiguous and reveals that in the Rajya Sabha election, the National Conference appointed four polling agents, the BJP appointed two and Congress appointed one. Neither PDP nor Awami Ittehad Party appointed any agent at all.

 

Imran explained the legal significance of this for the public. "Under Rule 39AA of the Conduct of Election Rules, every political party with MLAs in the assembly is required to appoint two authorised agents through Form 22A, with at least one agent present throughout polling hours.The agent's role is to verify and observe which candidate each MLA votes for," he said.

 

The rule, Imran stressed, makes no provision for exemption simply because a party does not have its own Rajya Sabha candidate. He said this directly contradicts the explanation offered by PDP leaders, including a tweet by one Mohit that was later retweeted by Mehbooba Mufti and commented on by Naeem Akhtar, claiming the party was not obligated to appoint an agent.

 

To further dismantle that defence, Imran pointed to the 2015 Rajya Sabha election as precedent. At that time, the People's Conference did not have a Rajya Sabha candidate, yet they still appointed agents. Congress too had no candidate that year but appointed agents regardless. PDP itself had candidates then and was well aware of the rule. He said it is therefore dishonest for PDP to now claim ignorance or exemption.

 

Imran then turned his attention to the Congress party. He said the lone Congress agent, Nizamuddin Bhat, was present to check other MLAs' votes, but there was no second agent to verify Bhat's own vote or to monitor who else may have been allowed to cross-vote. 

 

He asked directly why Congress appointed only one agent when the rules permit two and why they did not appoint a non-MLA as the second agent, effectively leaving a gap in oversight that benefited the BJP.Click Here To Follow Our WhatsApp Channel

 

He directed his sharpest remarks at PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, stating that under the rules, the form for appointing agents requires her personal signature. Since no agent was appointed, he said her signature is absent, making her directly accountable. 

 

He called on her to explain how she can claim to be an opposition leader while having facilitated the BJP's Rajya Sabha seat through this omission. He said he would publicly apologise at a crossroads if he was proven wrong, but demanded the same accountability from her if she was found to be lying about the rules.

 

On the question of where eight votes for the BJP came from in an assembly where NC, PDP, AIP, and Congress all publicly positioned themselves as anti-BJP, Imran said the numbers simply do not add up unless there was deliberate coordination. He noted that the People's Conference's lone MLA, party chairman Sajad Gani Lone, refused to participate in the election precisely because he sensed match-fixing at the time. The RTI reply, Imran said, has now proven that instinct correct.

 

He also addressed what he described as a diversion campaign being run by PDP, specifically a video posted by Mehbooba Mufti's daughter Iltija Mufti invoking the late Syed Ali Geelani's views on Urdu to shift public attention away from the Rajya Sabha controversy. 

 

Imran said the Peoples Conference will not allow this diversion to succeed and challenged Iltija Mufti to also post what Geelani had said about her grandfather Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, whom Geelani reportedly called a master of sugar-coating poison.

 

Towards the end of his statement, Imran raised the issue of selective law enforcement. He pointed out that while Iltija Mufti can publicly post content related to Geelani without consequence, ordinary Kashmiri youth in areas like Sopore have been slapped with Public Safety Act charges for simply liking or sharing similar content online. 

 

He called this a clear double standard and warned young Kashmiris not to engage with such posts, as the same protection would not extend to them.

 

He announced that his personal contact number and email are being made public so that families of those jailed under such circumstances can reach out to the People's Conference for support. 

 

He said a list of around 84 such individuals has already reached them, and the party intends to write to authorities and publicly advocate for those detained.

 

Imran closed by reaffirming that the People's Conference would continue exposing what he called a pattern of betrayal by parties that campaign on an anti-BJP platform while quietly enabling the BJP at every critical juncture, whether in 2014 with the PDP-BJP alliance or now in the Rajya Sabha. (KNS)