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| Reorganisation the only way out, says JKNPP | | Ending Discrimination With Jammu | | Neha
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, July 22: "Reorganisation of the state on the basis of geographical, cultural and social identities, along with creation of separate assemblies for Kashmir, Ladakh and Jammu, is the only durable solution to prevailing problems of discrimination in the state," said the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) on Thursday. In fact, the working committee of the JKNPP adopted a resolution to this effect and the resolution only reiterated what the party's Agenda 2011 had stated: Reorganisation, separate assembly and separate chief minister for Jammu as well as Kashmir and Ladakh, among other things.
The working committee also demanded the establishment of Central University in Jammu without any delay and condemned the use of brutal force against the student community and the government employees. However, the main focus was on the need to reorganize the state forthwith in order to end discrimination with Jammu and ensure equitable development of all the three regions. The message from the JKNPP working committee was that time has come for the people to start a full-scale movement to achieve the state goal: reorganization.
Is the demand of the JKNPP genuine? Of course, it is. The people of Jammu province have been crying for justice since October 1947, but with no result whatever. Rather, the situation worsened in Jammu province with each passing day, with the authorities in the state and their henchmen in Jammu and powers-that-be in New Delhi doing all they could to jeopardize even the general political and economic rights of the people of Jammu province in their desperate bid to keep the Kashmiri people -- barring the miniscule minority of Kashmiri Hindus, Sikhs, and religious and ethnic minorities like Shiite Muslims, Gujjar and Bakerwal Muslims and Pathowari-speaking Muslims -- in good humour.
It's true that the authorities in the state and at New Delhi appointed commissions from time to time under pressure from the people of Jammu province to look into their grievances and complaints and suggest measures to satisfy the regional urges of the people, but all the reports, without any exception, were thrown in the dustbin by the biased authorities. Take, for example, the reports of Gajendragadkar Commission, Wazir Commission and Singhal Committee. All these reports had candidly acknowledged that the people of Jammu province had not got their due share in the state's socio-economic and politico-administrative processes and recommended some definite measures calculated to redress some of their immediate grievances.
The Gajendragadkar Commission (1967) had, among other things, recommended regional development board and rotational chief minister. The recommendations were rejected out-of-hand. The Wazir Commission (1981) had recommended three more districts for Jammu province on the grounds that it had more land area and that the terrain of the province was highly difficult and treacherous. The Commission had also recommended one more district for Kashmir province. But no action was taken on the report for decades. It was only in 2007 that the then Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Congress took action, but he implemented the report in a wrong way. He set up four new districts in Jammu and an equal number of districts in Kashmir throwing to the wind the recommendations of the Wazir Commission. The Singhal Committee (1998) had recommended that all the seats available with the Jammu province-based technical and professional institutions should be made the sole preserve of the Jammu youth. The Committee had made a similar recommendation for the Kashmir province. But the then Farooq Abdullah-led NC government engaged senior Supreme Court lawyer PP Rao to ensure the collapse of the Singhal Committee report and he succeeded in outraging the Jammu student community. Mercifully, all the Jammu-based leaders, without any exception, sided with the Kashmiri dominated and Valley-centric successive governments in the state to ensure the defeat of their own constituency in the Jammu province.
What about the State Finance Commission that submitted its report to the Chief Minister last year? It was a highly biased report. The chairman of the Commission and one Kashmir-based member of this Commission joined hands and didn't include in the report the findings and suggestions of Swami Raj Sharma (Jammu) and Dawa (Ladakh). There are reports that the state government has accepted the lop-sided and essentially anti-Jammu report. And, still there are Jammu-based ministers belonging to the Congress party who hoodwink the people of Jammu province by saying day in and day out that New Delhi wishes to convert Jammu and Kashmir state into a model state. By Jammu and Kashmir state these ministers and New Delhi mean Kashmir and Kashmir only.
The demand of the JKNPP leadership seeking reorganization of the state needs to be viewed in this context. Indeed, it is difficult not to endorse the JKNPP's suggestion as the suggestion is well-founded. The over 53-year-old politico-constitutional set-up has outlived its utility. It is highly centralized and it is patently Kashmir-centric and, hence, the need for immediate reorganization of the state. |
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