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| Delhi needs to grant citizenship rights to Pak refugees | | 70 years is too long a period | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Sept 17: It was 70 years ago that victims of two-nation theory in Pakistan migrated to Jammu to save their lives, dignity and culture hoping that they would be treated as citizens, and not subjects. Sadly, however, all the successive governments in Jammu and Kashmir, including the present one of which the so-called nationalist BJP is also a part have flatly refused to treat them as citizens of the state. They do not have the rights which the permanent residents of the state enjoy. They are Indian citizenship but citizens of Jammu and Kashmir subjects.
The result is that they continue to lead a wretched life in various parts of Jammu province, especially in Kathua, Jammu, Samba districts. They lead marginalized and insecure life and are barred from buying and own property anywhere in Jammu and Kashmir. They are also not entitled to admission in institutions of higher learning and professional institutions. Nor can they hold jobs in Jammu and Kashmir Government that have become the sole preserve of permanent residents of the state. Not just this, they can't even get ration cards and other benefits available to Jammu and Kashmir citizens. They also cannot avail bank loan facilities.
State Subject laws were passed during the time of Maharaja Hari Singh in order to prevent the influx of Punjabis. The Kashmiri leadership had opposed these laws tooth and nail. They were urging the state government to "import educated people from Punjab and other parts of British India so that they could man all the posts in the state from Governor to orderly.
The Kashmir-based National Conference did not allow people from a particular community from Pakistan to become state subjects because they "didn't want even the slightest increase in the size of the population of a particular community in the state in order to maintain their domination". Their number was just a little more than one lakh. In contrast, the rest of the country has "absorbed a much higher number of illegal migrants from Bangladesh.
But the National Conference, the Congress, the BJP and the PDP, in the words of a Jammu and Kashmir watcher, "don't want to create even a small opening for allowing those to enjoy equal citizenship rights even while Kashmiris have freely exercised their right to establish businesses in other states, buy properties and get jobs outside Jammu and Kashmir". "It is tragic that successive governments at the Centre remained indifferent to the plight of refuges from Pakistan and did not push for granting citizenship to them despite the fact that under the existing state laws they deserved that right after 10 years of continuous habitation in Jammu and Kashmir," the commentator has said.
This Delhi-based commentator has further said: "It is this mindset nurtured with great ferocity by the National Conference that helped create conducive conditions for ethnic cleansing of a particular community from the Valley. The National Conference inculcated the fear of and hatred as it knew that members of a particular community are the main roadblock to and counterweight against the secession of Kashmir to Pakistan, though demanded under the guise of azadi".
The BJP needs to revisit it Vision Document 2014, which clearly says that the BJP, if voted to power, shall grant full citizenship rights to the refugees from Pakistan. Now that the BJP has been in power in Jammu and Kashmir since March 1, 2015, it must fulfill the solemn pledge it took to obtain people's mandate. |
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