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| Bias: see these figures | | Center equally responsible for Jammu’s plight | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Sept 22: Jammu has always cried against the blatant discrimination in almost all spheres of life but the statistics and arithmetics always played truant with the cause as the political sloganeering alone could not get justice.
“Region has been discriminated against by the political elite of Kashmir”, this is the oft repeated exhortation in Jammu for several decades now. However, when it comes to figures the champions of the cause often fumble to disadvantage of the region.
Perhaps for the first time, an authentic data on the development parameters has come to the fore which clearly reflects the obvious bias in funding pattern. It has come from a political party, therefore the doubts of veracity are natural but behind the research is an academician who seems to have undertaken an arduous task in consulting the planning papers and reports.
Prof Hari Om, a historian by education and profession, is now a senior leader of the BJP who has done an academic exercise to compile the development funding figures. The details are about central Five Year Plan (FYP) funding which makes the discrimination story stronger. This is about the funding pattern of different sector adopted by the Central government in Jammu and Kashmir. (A table alongside explains the discrimination unleashed by the central government and its plan pundits)
The prejudice is more perverse in the political front. “Jammu’s population is more by any yardstick, land area is almost double that of Kashmir and whose nature of terrain highly treacherous and difficult, has been reduced to a nullity for all practical purposes by the Valley leadership by manipulating 46 seats in a house of 87”, said Hari Om. He pointed out Kashmir returns three members to the Lok Sabha and 46 to the assembly at the rate of one per 9.61 lakh voters and 62,673 voters, respectively, and Jammu returns two members to the Lok sabha and 37 to the assembly at the rate one per 15.59 lakh voters and 84,270 voters, respectively.
The BJP leaders said Kashmir has, in contrast, 46 assembly segments at the rate of one per 344 sq km on an average and Jammu has 37 assembly segments at the rate of one per 710 sq km on an average.
They said had the Congress-led Government implemented its July 2006 decision, Kashmir would have got 58 seats as against the existing 46 and Jammu only 46 as against the existing 37, thus further increasing the difference in the number of assembly seats between Kashmir and Jammu from the existing 9 to 12.
They said these are only a couple of the several such instances of glaring discrimination perpetrated by the Valley's ruling elite on Jammu, despite the fact that this province contributes more than 70 per cent revenue to the State exchequer every year. In support his claim that Jammu contributes more revenue, he said the Government realized Rs 2474.802 crores from Jammu and Rs 1075.29 crores from Kashmir as sales tax between 1975 and 2007.
The BJP leaders said that their party would not only make the issue of discrimination as one of its major election planks, but would also expose the dirty role of these parties during the agitation in Jammu over the Amarnath land issue. |
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