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| BAJ again identifies itself with Jammu and nation | | Meeting With PM | |
MINCING NO WORDS
NEHA
JAMMU, Mar 4: The Bar Association Jammu (BAJ), the premier organization of the legal profession, has at no point of time during all these years of its existence missed any opportunity to identify itself with the people of Jammu province, highlight the adverse impact on the province caused by the discriminatory policies and come to the forefront to neutralize the baneful influence of fissiparous tendencies and politics of communalism and secessionism.
The BAJ played a spectacular role during the Darbar Movement and scored a splendid victory by defeating those who wanted to keep the Civil Secretariat in Kashmir on a permanent basis. It played a unique role in and contributed immensely to the success of the 1998 student movement and the result was that it, in collaboration with the Jammu-based student organizations and civil society, succeeded in bringing the government of the time to its knees. The immediate fall-out was the establishment of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University at Katra and Agricultural University at R S Pura.
Not only this, the state government had to appoint a commission of inquiry to look into the complaint of the agitating student community in Jammu that the Jammu youth had been consistently denied its due share in the technical and professional institutions, especially the medical colleges. The movement had been spearheaded by the Jammu Joint Students Federation and supported by one and all. The committee submitted its report in 1999 and recommended that all the seats available in the Jammu province-based engineering and medical colleges be earmarked for the Jammu youth and all the seats available in the Kashmir-based similar institutions for the Kashmiri youth. It is, however, a different story that the Jammu leadership let down the Jammu youth by not doing anything to pressurize the state government to implement the report, with the result the Jammu youth continues to suffer. The report continues to gather dust in the Civil Secretariat.
The role played by the BAJ during the Amarnath land agitation in Jammu was no less spectacular. The nature of its commitment to the cause could be determined from the fact that the then BAJ president, Bhupinder Singh Slathia, had resigned from the post of Additional Advocate General in order to take the plunge. It is important to note that he belonged to the Congress party. He has again become president of the BAJ and he won the election only recently by a huge, huge margin. His was, in fact, an unprecedented victory in the electoral history of the Bar Association.
It was expected that he and his team would make an optimum use of the Prime Minister’s Jammu visit today and bring to his notice certain things which are of considerable importance as far as Jammu province and nation are concerned. Take, for example, what the memorandum Slathia and his team submitted to the Prime Minister said. It, among other things, said: “As against the sanctioned strength of fourteen judges, we have at present five vacancies and this number is going to further increase to six…in July, 2011. As of now there are only 10 Hon’ble judges – six from Kashmir, including one from the minority community (read Kashmiri Hindu community), one from Jammu and three from rest of the country, including the Hon’ble Chief Justice…It would not be out of place to mention here that Bar Association Jammu – apart from discharging its legal obligations – has also become a symbol of nationalism, with the people always looking towards it as their saviour. It hardly needs to be emphasized that the Bar Association Jammu has always stood for equal treatment to all the three regions of the State and it would always wish that the feeling of regional discrimination, political or otherwise, is met with appropriate redressal.”
The meaning of what the memorandum said was loud and clear. The meaning was Jammu is being discriminated against; the BAJ would not hesitate to take the plunge in the event of undesirable elements trying to vitiate the atmosphere in the region; the BAJ would always be at the back and call of the nation; the BAJ would like the Prime Minister to address the issue of discrimination with the people of Jammu province. The fact of the Matter is that the BAJ has once again identified itself with the people of Jammu province and those who hold the nation very dear.
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