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| Former Minister indicts his own Government | | Refugee Issue | | Neha
JAMMU, Jan 2: Congress leader and former minister in the PDP-led coalition government Manjit Singh yesterday blamed certain parties and bureaucrats for not settling the refugee issue and commended the efforts put in by JKPCC president Saif-ud-Din Soz and his loyalists saying they had moved heaven and earth to get the long-pending demands of various categories of refugees conceded. (Singh had defected from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) immediately after his victory in 2002 to become minister.) Singh made these remarks while interacting with party workers at Vijaypur and informed them that the UPA Government "is serious to settle the refugees". He told them that the JKPCC chief and others like him are on the job and once again reassured them that "there demands could be fulfilled without further delay".
Paradoxically, Singh this time did not refer to the refugees from West Pakistan; he only referred to the demands of the displaced persons of 1965 and 1971 and the 1947 refugees from Pakistan-occupied-Jammu & Kashmir (POJK). It was not in inadvertent omission; it was, it appears, a deliberate omission. The refugees from West Pakistan numbering around one lakh have been struggling since 1947 to obtain citizenship rights, but with no result because the Kashmiri leadership and its henchmen in Jammu have consistently opposed their demand tooth and nail saying the grant of citizenship rights to them will erode the state's special status and change the state's demography.
Interestingly, Singh neither named the parties nor the bureaucrats who had been applying brakes and scuttling the efforts of the Congress leaders like the JKPCC president and his loyalists. He made a general statement, thus keeping even the anti-refugee politicians and bureaucrats in good humour. He knew it full well that it was the NC and its supporters in the government and administration who were the real culprits, but he thought it politically wise not to name them. However, he did indict the state government of which the Congress is the second most crucial constituent. The state government will collapse like the house of cards collapses in no time in case the Congress withdrew its support to the government. Actually, Singh castigated the Congress ministers in general and Revenue, Relief and Rehabilitation Minister in particular by saying that even if the Union Government had asked the state government to furnish the required details on the refugee problems and demands, the latter would not have done the needful. It is the Revenue, Relief and Rehabilitation Minister, who is the concerned minister and he belongs to the Congress party. To be more precise, Singh indirectly said that had the Congress ministers in the Cabinet played their role, the refugee issue would have settled by now.
Indeed, it is the Congress, and not the NC leadership and certain bureaucrats, which is actually responsible for most of the ills afflicting the state as well as refugees. Had the Congress ever played people-centric, rational and national role, things in the state would have been somewhat different and the refugees and others in the state have not suffered like they have been suffering since decades. |
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