Geelani threatens stir over Pakistani refugees getting Kashmir citizenship
Syed Ali Geelani, who heads the resistance conglomerate All Parties Hurriyat Conference, here has threatened to launch a stir if India granted voting rights to over a million West Pakistan refugees living in Jammu and Kashmir.
While terming the recommendations of the Indian parliamentary committee regarding the settlement of Western Pakistan refugees as an attack on the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and a conspiracy to change the demographic position of the state, he cautioned that ‘if the government accepts these recommendations then it will be resisted tooth and nail and a strong movement will be launched against it’.
He said that the new government of India had ‘actively started to work over the hidden agenda of the RSS’ and with the help of the state power, they have kick started a dangerous plan to change the demography of Muslim majority of Jammu and Kashmir.
In a statement from New Delhi to the press, Geelani said: “As far as the people of ‘Azad Kashmir’ are concerned, who have crossed the ceasefire line to this side, they are legally permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir and no one is against their permanent settlement here.”
“But the refugees who have come from the West Pakistan are in no way the residents of Jammu and Kashmir but they are legally the permanent residents of India and they will be never and at any cot be allowed to become the permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir,” the octogenarian leader, who is Indian capital New Delhi for medical check-up, said.
The pro-freedom leader said that the issue of permanently settling of the West Pakistan refugees in the state is linked with the constitution of the state and the recommendations of the Indian parliamentary committee are a direct attack over the constitution of the state and it also puts a big question mark over the intention and the status of the committee.
He said that ‘there are about 5 lakh West Pakistan refugee and issuing state subjects in their favour and giving voting rights to them will be equal to the uprooting of the constitution of the state and it will create serious crisis in the Jammu and Kashmir’.
The Hurriyat chairman said that from the partition in 1947 more than 15 lakh Kashmiris have migrated to the other side of the ceasefire line and West Pakistan and the communal people here have illegally occupied their lands and properties.
“Till now there return has never been discussed and nether has been their properties vacated from the illegal occupation. Contrary to that recommendations for the permanent settlement of west Pakistan refugee in the Jammu and Kashmir who have more right to become the permanent residents of India, is part of a plan which has been formulated to change the demography and the disputed nature of the state,” he said.
He said that the parliamentary committee has made irresponsible recommendations over a most sensitive issue and these recommendations are against the will and aspirations of the people of Kashmir. “Jammu and Kashmir is not Uttar Pradesh or Gujarat or like any other state of India but it is internationally accepted a disputed territory and there is no constitutional or moral justification of its military occupation. The ruling party of India should very much understand that the steps out of haste can put the state on the fire and it will further make the political environment of the state unstable,” he said.
