news details |
|
|
| Jammu, Ladakh people have high expectations | | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 2: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit J&K on Sunday. He will visit all the three regions of the state - Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir. His will be a highly hectic schedule. The suffering, neglected and discriminated people of Jammu and Ladakh consider his visit ahead -of-election very significant. They are expecting some big announcements from the PM.
There are Hindu and Sikh refugees living in Jammu since 1947 and they want the PM to show the Kashmiri leaders their place and announce citizenship rights for them. Then, there are refugees from Pakistan-occupied-Jammu and Ladakh and from Kashmir. Their number is about 1.8 million. While the refugees from PoJL, all Hindus and Sikhs - want the PM to announce a financial package that compensates them for the properties they left behind in 1947 and 1948. The votaries of 2-nation in Pakistan and their supports in PoJL had created a situation which left them with no other option but to migrate to Jammu and other parts of the country, including Delhi, Punjab and Maharashtra. As for the internally-displaced Kashmiri Hindus, their demand is creation of a separate homeland within the Valley invested with UT status. They want UT where the Indian Constitution flows freely. They say that they can't live with those who expelled them because they opposed the anti-India movement.
The people of Jammu province also have several grievances and demands. They say that they have inadequate representation in the assembly, in the civil secretariat, in the job sector, in the financial institutions, in the nation-making institutions, including Universities located in their own province, and in the technical and professional institutions, including medical and engineering colleges and agriculture university. They say they have no say in the state's all powerful Home, Revenue, Finance and Law Departments as well as the GAD is also controlled by Kashmir. They have been demanding a radical change in the state's politico-constitutional and administrative set-up since decades that establishes parity between all the three regions and ends the age-old Kashmiri domination over them and the state's polity and socio-economic and politico-administrative institutions.
Their age-old demand has been reorganization of the state and their full merger with India. The Congress and the BJP repeatedly assured and reassured them that they would reorganize the state polity on regional lines if came into power, but they have only let down them by not fulfilling their solemn commitments. The people of Jammu say that separation from Kashmir is the only panacea available to them and they must have their own assembly, their own CM, their own secretariat and their own High Court. They want the PM to reassure them that he will redress their grievances and apply the Punjab, UP, Bihar, AP and MP model to the state of J&K (read division of these states to satisfy the regional, as opposed to religious, basis. They also say that their very identity and personality is in danger and their complete merger with India and complete political empowerment could save them from the impending disaster.
The story of Ladakh is no different. They had voted for the BJP in 2014 and 2015 en-block on the premise that the BJP would grant them UT status, include the Bhoti language in the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution. Today, they are up against the BJP because the BJP didn't fulfill the promises it made before and in 2014. They, like the people of Jammu, believe that separation from Kashmir is the only option left for them. In other words, they want the visiting PM to announce UT status for them.
One can only hope and pray that the PM will address the issues facing the people of Jammu and Ladakh. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
