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| BJP's resolution deserves government attention | | | EARLY TIMES REPORT
Jammu,Dec 25: The BJP's three-point resolution on the Kashmir problem ostensibly indicates the party's urge for further strengthening its base in the Jammu and Ladakh regions. It has talked loud about the discrimination of the regions of Ladakh and Jammu. The emphasis on the discrimination of Ladakh is the result of recent birth of the BJP in the land of Lamas. Well the BJP has sounded the right tone when it pleaded for strengthening the constitutional and political relationaship between the state of Jammu and Kashmir and rest of the country. Since its source of strength is in the Jammu region it has lamented over the continued discrimination of the region of Jammu which has been starved because of poor allocation of funds for various development projects. The BJP is right when it talks of the need for differentiating separatists from the common people in the valley. This approach is quite sensible because it would be wrong to treat the entire population of the valley as separatists and if the separatists have been able to evoke response to their calls for shutdown and rallies it is because of fear of militants who have been lending full support to the separatists, especially the hardliners led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
Well the BJP leadership cannot claim to be as innocent as a cow. Two questions emerge when one compares the BJP leadership with either the Congress leadership or any other party that remained in power in the centre. First is. What did the BJP do when it was in power for over five years in the centre as far as the question of ending discrimination of the people of the Jammu region is concerned? It could have mounted pressure on the then state Government for making equal allocation of funds for the regions of Jammu and Kashmir and increase allocations for the Ladakh region. It did nothing like that. Leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said in Jammu on Thursday that the Government slept over the demand for carrying out fresh delimitation of the Assembly constituencies because the Kashmir centric ruling leaders wanted to prevent equality in power sharing. Jaitley is right when he said that every attempt had been made to ensure that the discrimination in the allocation of parliamentary and Assembly seats continued. It is really tragic for the people of the Jammu region when the successive state Governments have been opposing delimitation of the parliamentary and Assembly constituencies as the Kashmir centric ruling leaders know that fresh delimitation would increase Assembly seats in the Jammu region by not less than 10 and the Lok Sabha seats by one because of its area and population being larger than the valley.
And when the BJP leaders expressed concern over the plight of the refugees from West Pakistan who have been staying in Jammu for the last over 60 years they were voicing the feelings of majority of people in the Jammu region. However, the second question is. What did the BJP leadership do for the welfare of the West Pakistan refugees when it was in power in the centre for over five years? If the BJP wanted it could have motivated the then state Government to adopt required amendment to the constitution so that these hapless refugees got citizenship rights. Nothing like this happened. Chalo for a change the BJP has realised the importance of proper rehabilitation of these refugees whose only fault was that at the time of migration from Pakistan they decided to settle in Jammu. Their brethren who also had migrated from Pakistan but moved to other states are far better than those settled in Jammu as far as they do not have any problem about citizenship and about proprietary rights of land and houses they own or they have been given by the Government. What is intriguing is the way the issues pertaining to discrimination of the region of Jammu and raw deal to the West Pakistan refugees are raised by political leaders, irrespective of their party affiliation, during the Assembly and the Lok Sabha elections only. On several occasions even the National Conference leadership has been seen committing itself to granting citizenship rights to the West Pakistan refugees and to ending regional discrimination. Once the elections are over the issues are either thrown in the waste paper basket or forgotten as a bad dream. Hope the BJP and its supporters make a commitment to rake up these two issues both at the state and the national level so that whatever injustice had been done was undone shortly. Hope the state Government gives some attention to the three-point resolution of the BJP. |
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