New Delhi:Former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Shehla Rashid on Wednesday announced she was quitting “mainstream politics” in Jammu and Kashmir, citing the Centre’s decision to abrogate Article 370 as the reason.

Meanwhile, as per sources, Kashmir’s bureaucrat-turned-independent politician, Shah Faesal, who is under house arrest in Srinagar, has also hinted at leaving the electoral politics.

Rashid, former Vice President of the JNU Students’ Union, said that her announcement was prompted by the government’s move to hold Block Development Councils (BDC) elections later this month in Jammu and Kashmir, where communication restrictions are in place.

Calling the BDC polls a “sham electoral exercise” being carried out by the Centre “in order to convince the world that it is still a democracy”, she claimed that the “Indian government continues to abduct children in Kashmir, and even as people are deprived of the means to call an ambulance and other emergency services”.

Noting that she joined politics as she believed it was “possible to deliver both justice as well as good governance, and also work for the resolution of the Kashmir issue as per the wishes of the people of Jammu and Kashmir”, Rashid said: “All this would have been possible if the government respected the rule of law.”