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| Political dominance of Kashmir & Kashmir's | | | Sanjay Puri | 7/27/2015 10:51:19 PM |
| It is irony that the voice of people of Jammu who are known for their secular and nationalist credentials has always been suppressed and discriminated. The successive governments at the Centre have been pumping in thousands of crores of rupees in Jammu and Kashmir for development. But majority of this money has been siphoned off for so called development in Kashmir, at the cost of the development of Jammu and Ladakh regions.
It is sad that majority of Kashmiri separatists chose to live with militancy and support Pakistan instead of India but it is sadder for people of Jammu that they chose to be peaceful and be a part of India and yet be treated like a stepchild.
There is a perception about political dominance of Kashmir and Kashmir's. There is widespread feeling that one comes across in Jammu region that political decisions in the state are Kashmir oriented and in the allocation of resources in the Jammu region remains perpetually discriminated.
The basic deprivation of Jammu region has neither been psychological nor material but it has been the political one. The seeds of political disempowerment of Jammu were sown with the distribution of seats for State Constituent Assembly by Sheikh Abdullah's administration. Out of 75 seats, it gave 43 to Kashmir, 30 to Jammu and two to Ladakh. Jammu region could never get properly represented in the structure of power. The structure of power in the initial years of popular rule reflected excessive concentration of power in the hands of Kashmir's political elite gradually; it became a norm that Jammu would at best have nominal share in power.
The Praja Parishad launched the first major agitation of Jammu in 1952. This agitation was a response to arbitrary nature of exercise of power by the political elite of Kashmir and gave vent to popular reactions against the anti Jammu attitude of power holders. The actual protest was manifested against the Delhi Agreement of 1952 signed between the central government and state government led by Sheikh Abdullah. This agreement while accepting the special status of the state provided for the basis of its future relationship with the centre. The 1952 agitation may be considered important for a number of reasons for analyzing Jammu's regional politics. It was the first open manifestation of the political discontent of the region. The immediate fall out of the 1951 exercise was the emergence of dispensation under which no persons from Jammu and Ladakh could ever become Chief Minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The prime reason is that since Kashmir has more seats in the legislative assembly, the office of the Chief Minister is its sole preserve. A dispassionate scrutiny of all the reports which various delimitation commission submitted from time to time reveals that they did pass on the centre of political gravity to the Kashmir hands or they were designed to accommodate what may be termed as selfish contentions of a group of Kashmiri leaders and put the initiative for every aspect of the state's politico- administrative and economic structure on Kashmir. A Chief Minister depending upon the Kashmiri vote bank alone for gaining and retaining power was bound to cultivate the Kashmiri electorate by all sorts of administrative measures and do more and more for the valley. A policy of regional discrimination thus emerged. That is how a power structure came into being which ultimately led to regional imbalances. The Jammu region is inadequately represented in the state Civil Secretariat. Over 80 percent of the state's tourism budget is spent in the valley every year. Despite the fact that the number of tourists who visit Jammu region every year is 10 times more than those going to the Kashmir valley. The same story of neglect is true of roads also. Inter regional disparities become all the more clear when one compares the percentage share of different regions in the length of roads. The same story of neglect is in rural electrification, irrigation facilities, power generation etc. Right from the day of state's accession to the Indian dominion, funds for development schemes have become the sole privileges of the valley alone, with Jammu and Ladakh getting crumbs. The simmering volcano in Jammu erupted again when four demonstrating students were killed in police firing on October 16-17, 1967 against the evil designs of shifting Agricultural and Ayurvedic College to Srinagar. Initially these colleges were to be established at Jammu.
In order to look into the grievances of Jammu region, the central and state government set up with much fanfare four commissions to pacify the people of Jammu as well as to look into the demand for the creation of more districts in the state. These were the Gajendragadkar Commission (1967), the Qadri Commission (1972), the Sikri Commission (1979), and Wazir Commission (1981). The commission constituted in 1967 and 1979 were to look into the complaints of the people of Jammu and recommend measures which could rectify the regional imbalances and harmonies in inter- regional relations. The commissions dealing with regional disparities and inter regional animosities, particularly the Gajendragadkhar Commission, candidly admitted injustice to the Jammu region and recommended several steps to ensure Jammu's and Ladakh's effective and real participation in the state's political and economic processes. The Gajendragadkhar Commission, recommended creation of a statutory development board at state level and statutory development regional boards, one each for Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Some of the other recommendations of the Gajendragadkar Commission included division of the functions of each head of department on a regional basis, creation of regional recruitment boards, establishment of full fledged university for Jammu region, opening of a separate medical college at Jammu, introduction of uniform prices of food grains throughout the state and uniformity in the quantum in the food grains rations issued. However, what were most significant were the observations of the Gajendragadkar Commission that "the main cause of irritation and tension was the feeling of political neglect and discrimination from which certain regions (Jammu and Ladakh) of the state suffer. Even if all the matters are equitably settled, we feel that there would still be a measure of discontent unless the political aspirations of different regions are satisfied". It's yet another significant comment was that "although the Jammu and Kashmir state has been a single political entity for over hundred years, it cannot be denied that geographically, ethnically, culturally and historically it is composed of three separate homogeneous regions namely Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh.
The Kashmiri rulers have always manipulated their permanent dominating positions in all walks of life and thus denied Jammu its due share in political power and economic development.
They amended Section 47 (3) of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir in the year 2002 and incorporated a proviso therein which States, "that until the relevant figures for the first census taken after the year 2026 have been published, it shall not be necessary to readjust the total number of seats in the Legislative Assembly of the State and the division of the State into territorial Constituencies under this sub-section". The Legislature in the year 2002 resorted to a dubious device for depriving the due share of the electorates of Jammu Region that would have gone to them in accordance with the mandates of unamended Section 3 of the J&K Representation of People Act after theexercise of census of 2001. A Delimitation Commission would have been mandatorily constituted and its verdict had to be carried out. Section 3 (Representation of People's Act) was amended along with Section 47 (3) of the Constitution of J&K and the bar for readjustment of the total seats available was imposed till the figures of the first census taken after the year 2026 have been published. In other words, the establishment of Delimitation Commission was totally banned at least up to the year 2031.
The All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) was the only institution that was sanctioned for Jammu by New Delhi on its own. The announcement was hailed by one and all in Jammu. However, within 24 hours, the people of Jammu region came to know that the BJP had committed an AIIMS for Kashmir even before forming the government with the PDP.
It is the responsibility of political leadership of Jammu to take up this issue with the Government. It is irrespective of party affiliations and this is an issue that concerns the people of the Jammu region, whom we do not divide on the basis of party politics. Instead of trying to bring the onus to the doorsteps of the Government, hold Jammu political leadership responsible for allowing the Government to adopt discriminative policy towards Jammu region Unless and until aspirations of the three ethnically distinct regions of the state are reconciled, the tension would cause one complication or the other. The struggle in Jammu today is not only about the AIIMS: Jammu wants to be heard at the high table of J&K politics, and it is no more willing to accept a Kashmir-centered polity in the State.
The author is senior Journalist. Feedback welcome at [email protected] |
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