Sir,
This has reference to the article “NO TO DE-FREEZING POJK SEATS ” by Sh. S.S. Jamwal in DE , 23rd July, 2021. MJR47 wants to clarify the few misqouted facts in the said article. The basic point he takes for refusing right of POJK DPs to seats in legislative assembly is that “POJK DPs / refugees donot have rights to cast vote in the state assembly elections” . This shows the total ignorance of the author and his premise is factually incorrect. The POJK DPs are as good state subjects as any body else including Mr Jamwal. We DPs have been casting our votes by right in all assembly and local bodies as well as for Parliament seats since1947 all along.
In the first go , it seems he has no idea of various catagory of refugees/DPs in the state. One catagory , the largest in number , is that from POJK who were displaced in Oct.1947 from POJK and have all the rights which any other permanent resident of the state has. POJK is an integral part of India as also resolved in Parliament in Feb 1994.
The other catagory is from West Pakistan who came to take shelter in J&K state at the time of partition of country. They are WPR and have rights only to cast votes in Parliament Elections and can’t vote for in any of the state elections as they were not permanent resident state subjects and had no PRC as all our DPs had and have . Another catagory can be taken as one from Chhamb of 1965 & 71′, and another is valley migrants. Others are from foreign countries outside our nation.
The then legislature was wise and nice enough to take care of non-migrated population from POK as well as migrated/ displaced population from POJK in 1947 and accordingly appears to have alloted seats to both sections i.e population residing in POK and DPs living in this part of India . There appears to be great mischief that being same number 24 seats were wrongly deleted. How can we believe that legislature will bother more for non- migrated without allocating same number to migrated /DPs and who factually saved Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 at the cost of sacrificing more than 40,000 lives in the genocide. This interpretation is squarely within the purview of the GOI .
Demand of POJK DPs is that we have all along been ignored and denied the representatation in J&K Assembly in violation of fundamental rights as guaranteed by Constitution of India.
A close scrutiny of the Section 14(3) and 14(4) shows that 24 seats shall remain vacant and these seats were not to be counted while counting total number of elected members’ seats i.e. 107, as provided in 14(3) . Thus this also means 24 vacant are in addition to 107 and not to be taken into account of total membership. What has been deducted till date from 107 is right of POJK DPs migrated from POJK and residing in India.
The POJK DPs have been sheltered in more than 25 assembly constituencies of Jammu region all along IB and LOC and have faced brunt of 1965 and 1971 wars and continuous cross firing by the Pakistan all along these years . Though they have been casting votes for all assembly elections but not for their own candidates and thus unable to elect their own representatives.
In view of above and in the interest of justice to DPs who faced massacre of more than 40000 persons in the genocide and saved Jammu and Kashmir in 1947, it is requested that the dispensation at center can alone interpret the provision in right prespective and accord justice not only to refugees/DPs but also to Jammu population by mitigating regional imbalance by releasing seats in favour of POJK DPs.
Non- representation to POJK DPs in political set -up will not only be injustice to these people but also against the spirit of constitution and Representation of People’s Act.
Suchwant Singh
Chief Spokesman , MJR47, Movement for Justice for Refugees of 1947 from POJK, Jammu.
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