Reserve one LS, 10 Assembly seats for PoJK DPs: Forum

Excelsior Correspondent

JAMMU, Dec 13: All J&K 1947 PoJK Sharnarthi Intellectul Forum has demanded that one Lok Sabha and at least ten Assembly seats be reserved for the displaced persons from Pak occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK).
The Forum in a meeting of its core committee members held under the presidentship of Amrik Singh and joined by Surjit Singh secretary of Forum, appealed to the Chairman of the Delimitation Commission and other members to allocate and reserve at least 10 assembly and one Parliament seat for the people forcibly displaced from occupied part of Jammu & Kashmir since 1947 where they have left out their moveable and immovable properties which is not registered till date either by Pakistan Govt or by Indian Government.
The Forum expressed that more than seven decades have been lapsed and it is the matter of regret that a large number of PoJK DPs who are more than 15 lakhs in number, are living without their representation in either ‘house’ of J&K.
The Forum elaborated that for giving representation to the Kashmiri Pandit community is a healthy step and is appreciable but the people who laid down their lives fighting against the Pakistan army and more than 40000 people martyred, the people of this community are being irgnored.
” We are still struggling for our democratic rights who are deprived of representation because of their scattered settlement in campus. Bore the partition of J&K state, there were two assembly seats kept reserved for Sikhs in Maharajas rule and this practice was carried out upto 1964 but later on this practice was abandoned without assigning any reason.
The Forum reiterated that the Delimitation Commission is reportedly ready with Ist paper on allocation and resizing of constituencies including that of reserved seats and it’s meeting is going to be held on December 20 at Delhi.
The meeting was attended by Inder Singh, Paramjit Singh, Sucha Singh-Corporators, Kuldeep Singh, HS Sudan, Prof KD Singh, Nasib Singh and others.