JOIN USThe Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has come up with a potentially controversial proposition by suggesting that people displaced from Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) be nominated to the 24 vacant seats of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.
In his more-than-an-hour long address to leaders and cadres at the national executive on Saturday, BJP president Rajnath Singh said: “There are 111 seats in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly out of which elections are held only for 87 seats as 24 seats lie in PoK that remain vacant. We think that provision should be made to fill these 24 seats by nominations from the people displaced from PoK”.
Jammu and Kashmir has its own constitution and Article 48 of the constitution says that till the area of the state remains under occupation of Pakistan, 24 seats will remain vacant in the Assembly. PoK, which historically was part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir ruled by Maharaja Hari Singh who, after partition in 1947 acceded to India, comprises ‘Azad Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan’.
Through tribal invasion, Pakistan, however, managed to take control of a portion of state which is now called PoK. Singh was of the view that Kashmiri Pandits, who fled from the Valley due to terror threats, too should be nominated to the Assembly. Expressing concern over the recent killing of sarpanches in the state, he said: “We condemn the manner in which democracy is being suppressed by terrorist outfits at the Panchayat level”.
He charged that terrorists were killing sarpanches to instill fear in them so that others resign from their position. “Due to fear of terrorists, hundreds of sarpanches have collectively tendered their resignation. Sarpanches are demanding security...,” he said.
Singh said that he had written a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh but nothing came out of it.