Even as Kashmiri separatist parties and mainstream National Conference are up in arms against the Centre’s proposed move to grant citizenship rights and other incentives to the erstwhile West Pakistan
Even as Kashmiri separatist parties and mainstream National Conference are up in arms against the Centre’s proposed move to grant citizenship rights and other incentives to the erstwhile West Pakistan refugees, the latter has contested the claim that they are more than a million in number and that their absorption would alter the demography of the Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir.
The BJP government’s reported inclination to grant citizenship and other rights, including right to vote in the state Assembly elections to the refugees in the light of the recommendations of a joint parliamentary committee (JPC), is while snowballing into a major controversy leading to an Amarnath land row like face-off between the state’s two politically and ethnically-distant regions of Jammu and Kashmir Valley.
It is not just the separatists who have threatened to launch an agitation against the reported move, the state’s oldest mainstream political party, the NC, too has vowed to fight it tooth and nail in the belief that the move will change the demography of the Muslim-majority state.
However, the refugee leaders have while reiterating their claim that many of them lived in Pakistan-occupied Kash-mir before they were uprooted by the 1947-48, 1965 and 1971 wars between India and Pakistan said their settlement cannot alter the demographic character of the state as they are too small in number contrary to the general belief of being over one million.
“There are few thousand families left which are still putting up in different parts of the state, mainly in the border areas of Jammu, as the others have migrated to different parts of the country and assimilated locally since,” said Ved Prakash, one of the refugees.
He added that even if all the refugees who were uprooted as a result of active hostilities between India and Pakistan in the past are taken into account “we are only a little over 100,000”.
