Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 18: Jat Kalyan Sabha held a protest demonstration under the leadership of its president Kamal Singh at tehsil Hiranagar demanding grant of OBC status to the community like other States.
The protestors from various areas of the Jammu province assembled at tehsil headquarter Hiranagar and raised slogans against the Government.
Kamal Singh while speaking said that Jats have a sizeable population of more than 5 lakhs in the State but have lagged behind socially and educationally due to frequent migration during Indo-Pak wars of 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999.
Jats have been settled along Indo-Pak border of Samba, Jammu, Rajouri, Poonch and Baramulla districts where educational facilities are not upto mark.
He warned the political parties in general and Congress and National Conference in particular to desist from delaying tactics and misleading the community as they will not tolerate such type of disparity with the community.
While elaborating about the backwardness of the community, he informed that the dropout rate among the children is more than 95 per cent which is the main reason of backwardness. He said that Jat community has negligible representation in the Government services in the State, adding that the representation in IAS and KAS is almost nil. In Industrial sector and business sector their representation is nil and they are dependent on manual labour labour in commercial mandies for their survival, he added.
Kamal said that previously the community belonged to farming community having small and marginal farmers. After migration some farmers were allotted less than four acres of land and some were left without land. He said that at present the landholding has been reduced merely for residential purpose and they have gone landless labourers.
The protestors impressed upon the Coalition Government to grant the community OBC status and make recommendations for central list as well, otherwise face the consequences in the forthcoming Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.
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