After a long period of eight years when the Paramedical Staff Union announced internal elections the bureaucracy started conspiracies to stop them. They even tried to stop these elections through the courts but in the end the election were held on May 30. As court action had failed the bureaucracy then tried to breakdown the workers' unity by whipping up the contradictions between technicians and the dispensers. Then they used every kind of trick to rig the elections and to stop the Marxist and favour the victory of the Al- Khidmat panel (fundamentalists).
Before the election they set up a transitional body in which our comrades were able to play a big role and one of our comrades, Baber Iqbal, was nominated as the district secretary general of the Ponch district.
When the election results were announced, comrade Afzal Shaheen won the position of District President of the Sindnoti District and comrade Baber Iqbal that of District Secretary General of the Ponch District. The total votes counted were 6360 from all over Kashmir, with the Democratic Panel winning with a lead of 1300 votes. That is a landslide victory and the biggest ever in Kashmir.
All this was only possible because of the revolutionary ideas the comrades defended. The manifesto of the Democratic Panel started with the historical words of Karl Marx, "Workers of the world unite!" Their flag is red and their election logo was a red rose. With revolutionary ideas we won against all the state machinery and the fundamentalist powers. Now from this victory a new era will start in Kashmir.