Plebiscite Front (Azad Kashmir)

The Plebiscite Front in Azad Kashmir, also called Mahaz-i-Raishumari, was founded by Amanullah Khan in collaboration with Abdul Khaliq Ansari and Maqbool Bhat in 1965. The organisation had an unofficial armed wing called National Liberation Front, which carried out sabotage activities in Jammu and Kashmir as well as the hijacking of Ganga. Amanullah Khan later moved to England, where he revived the National Liberation Front under the new name Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).

The Plebiscite Front was the initiative of Gilgit-born Amanullah Khan, who after graduating with a Law degree in Karachi, set up a Kashmir Independence Committee advocating the ideology of independence for the entire princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.

In April 1965, the Kashmir Independence Committee merged into the newly launched Plebiscite Front in Muzaffarabad. Abdul Khaliq Ansari was its president, Amanullah Khan the general secretary and Maqbool Bhat the publicity secretary. Journalist Arif Jamal states that, the participants drove to an unguarded location of the Kashmir Line of Control at Suchetgarh and, bringing back soil from the Indian-held Kashmir, took an oath that they would work exclusively for the liberation of Jammu and Kashmir.

Amanullah Khan and Maqbool Bhat also wanted to set up an armed wing for the Plebiscite Front, but the proposal did not get the majority support in the Plebiscite Front. Undeterred, they established an underground group called National Liberation Front (NLF), obtaining some support for it in August 1965. The group was fashioned after the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale. Major Amanullah, a former soldier in the Azad Kashmir forces, was in charge of the armed wing while Amanullah Khan and Mir Abdul Qayoom took charge of the political and financial wings. Maqbool Bhat was made responsible for the overall coordination. All the members swore in blood that they would be ready to sacrifice their lives for the objective of the NLF, viz., to create conditions in Jammu and Kashmir that enable its people to demand self-determination. The organisation was successful in recruiting members from Azad Kashmir, and obtained backing from the bureaucracy of the state.

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