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| BJP further annoys refugees from Pak through its double-talk on Article 35A | | Citizenship rights | | Early Times Report
Jammu, June 10: The belief of the BJP that Rs 5.5 lakh to each refugee family would placate the nearly 2 lakh Hindu-Sikh refugees from Pakistan living in Jammu since their migration in 1947 in the wake of the communal partition of India was not based on the ground reality as it existed in the refugee camps, located mostly in Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts. In fact, the refugees from Pakistan have in a way rejected Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh's June 8 Jammu announcement that each refugee family would be given financial assistance to the tune of Rs 5.5 lakh. This, notwithstanding the fact that refugee leader Labha Ram Gandhi on Saturday claimed that it was for the first time that any Union Government recognized the refugee issue.
"We can only draw solace from the fact that the Centre has ultimately recognized that some stateless refugee families have been living in Jammu" and that "financial compensation was not going to resolve their problem," Gandhi was quoted as saying.
Gandhi reiterated that citizenship rights alone could redress their 7-decade-old grievances. "We want citizenship rights. We have been longing for right to dignified life since 70 years. We want all the rights which are available to the people of the state. We want jobs in the state government; we want the right to vote in the assembly and local-bodies elections; we want the right to own property in the state; we want our children to study in the state's higher educational and technical and professional institutions; and we want all the rights so that we become full-fledged citizens of the state," Gandhi said.
Sadly, instead of appreciating the refugees' aspirations and needs, the J&K BJP on Saturday rubbed salt on their wounds by taking recourse to a double-talk on Article 35-A, which has not only denied citizenship rights to the refugees from Pakistan, but also deprived all the Indians outside J&K of the same rights.
The ungrateful BJP sought to mislead these refugees by seeking to create an impression that it was all for granting citizenship rights to them but it couldn't because the matter was sub-judice. The BJP took them for granted conveniently suppressing the fact that only this week the Union Government told the Supreme Court that it will not file any affidavit in favour of or against Article 370 and that it was a constitutional issue and it was for the apex court to take a final call on it. In fact, the BJP supported the PDP-BJP coalition government's stand in the Supreme Court.
The Union Government on June 6 told the Supreme Court that "a conscious decision has been taken not to file any counter-affidavit in this case because the issues, which are raised for adjudication, are pure questions of law". It didn't tell the SC that Article 35-A was illegal as it was not adopted by the Indian Parliament and that it was applied to the state through a Presidential Order issued on May 14, 1954 bypassing the Parliament.
On the contrary, the PDP-BJP Government in J&K filed an affidavit opposing any move aimed at getting Article 35-A scrapped.
By taking recourse to double-talk on Article 35-A, the BJP has only further angered the hapless refugees. If the BJP continued to behave like this for some more time, it would not get the refugee votes in the 2019 very crucial general elections. |
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