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| Refugees from Pakistan ups ante against BJP | | 'Betrayal' | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Mar 3: Refugees from Pakistan living in different parts of Jammu province since 1947 have again upped the ante against the BJP. Their leader Labha Ram Gandhi has accused the local BJP leadership by "betraying" the refugee cause to keep the PDP in a good humour. He has said that all of their efforts to persuade the local BJP leadership to make the state government grant them citizenship rights have gone down the drain. Earlier, he had reportedly told the Government of India representative Dineshwar Sharma that they would quit Jammu and migrate to other parts of the country if the refugees from Pakistan were not granted citizenship rights.
In the 2014 parliamentary and assembly elections, the BJP had held out a categorical assurance that it would grant citizenship refugees from West Pakistan. Approximately, 2 lakh West Pakistan refugees have been leading a wretched life in camps since 1947. They do not have Permanent Resident Certificates (PRCs). Bulk of them - almost 90 per cent - of these abandoned refugees belong to the Scheduled Castes (SCs) or Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
These refugees had voted almost en-block for the BJP and it had won both the Lok Sabha seats - Jammu-Poonch and Kathua-Udhampur-Doda -- with a huge margin. Jugal Kishore Sharma had won from Jammu and Jitendra Sintgh from Kathua-Ushampur-Doda.
On March 1, 2015, the PDP and the BJP formed a coalition government with PDP holding the office of Chief Minister and most of the vital portfolios. After coming into power, the BJP went back on its promise and overruled the possibility of the refugees getting PRCS, saying they were not state subjects. It took a complete U-turn to retain control over power it got for the first time by an accident. In fact, it sung the Kashmiri song.
It needs to be underlined that these refugees do not have the right to own immovable property in the state, right to vote in the assembly and local bodies' elections, right to job under the state government, right to higher education and even the right to bank loans.
In contrast, some of the Rohingyas from Myanmar, who were settled in different parts of Jammu city and Samba by the previous NC-Congress government, have obtained Aadhaar Cards, Ration Cards and Voter I-D Cards and also got power and water connections. So much so, they have set up their own market in the Bathindi area, Burmese market.
It is no wonder that the patience of the refugees from Pakistan is ending. It would be only desirable if the BJP asserts its position and force the state government grant citizenship rights to them. If the state government could think in terms of granting residency rights to kin of terrorists and residents of Pakistan and PoJK, why can't the BJP put its foot down and ask the government to grant residency rights to these refugees from Pakistan. They too have human rights and they have not come to from some foreign land. |
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