NC-Congress-Separatists join malicious campaign to hit Jammu

NC-Congress Govt. issued Domicile Certificates during 2009-12

R.S.Gill

Jammu Tawi, Feb 14: After much hue and cry that has been scaring the common Kashmiri about imaginative demographic change or affecting the Article 370 was found misplaced and rather false with the revelation that Domicile Certificate (Domicile Identity Card) to the West Pakistani Refugees had been issued for many years upto 2012 until a senior National Conference Minister objected to it and got it discontinued.

West Pakistani Refugees or WPRs as commonly known as a misnomer ( as they are actually Hindu Refugees of 1947, the bloody partition of India who landed in Jammu Kashmir escaping the bloodshed).

These WPRs, mostly Dalits or of Other Backward Classes, have been living in miserable conditions for the fourth generation now, without any change in their lives as they continue to be deprived of citizenship rights. They cannot own land, get government job, higher education, scholarships, caste certificate and even cannot take up any entrepreneurship within the state that demands state subject certificate as a prerequisite for the same.

Surprisingly, issuance of Domicile Certificate (Domicile Identity Card) to WPRs will not confer any such right on them from which they have been deprived so far by the Jammu and Kashmir Government and even it will not change their poor plight.

However, such certificate will help them to apply for Central Government and Armed forces jobs, to pursue higher studies and to avail other caste and socio-economic welfare benefits extended by the Government of India.

Till 2012, WPRs were getting jobs in the armed forces on the basis of domicile certificates, but the then Government of National Conference suddenly discontinued the system, thus hitting them below the belt, trying to justify the act by creating fear among the Kashmiris in the name of Article 370 and 35-A. Interestingly, these WPRs who were citizens of British India and became citizens of free India in 1947 were already living in Jammu and its surrounding areas much before the Article 370 and Art 35-A came into being in the constitution. How such laws had retrospective effect is a question for the legal experts to ponder over.

Separatist groups, Semi-Separatist and “Mainstream Hypocrites” bearing different attires all joined to raise the bogy of fear among the commoners out of a humane issue enabling the WPRs improvement in their lives. A hundred thousand refugees were projected as 10 lakh to justify their lies. Geelani, Mirwaiz, Malik, Shabir, Andrabi; and Farooq, Omar, Sagar and GA Mir were all on one plane to exploit the human miseries to nurse their communal constituency in Kashmir and elsewhere.

Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Ahmad Mir who have been clamouring for scoring brownie points by raising alarm on Issuance of Domicile Certificate (Domicile Identity Card) called it extra-constitutional and aiming at circumventing the state's special constitutional status and character, ignoring the “little known” fact that 784 Domicile Certificates to WPRs had been issued during 2009 to 2012 during NC-Congress Coalition Government, led by Omar Abdullah, but suddenly same was stopped not for the fears of demographic change but purely for political reasons.