Domicile and Delimitation: The two urgent concerns

Ashwani Kumar Chrungoo  

The two most urgent and immediate concerns of the people of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir are Delimitation of the electoral constituencies and the Domicile determination in view of the Notification released on and dated 31 March 2020. The Kashmiri Pandits are very curious to know about their future status as a community in context of their displacement from their homeland, Notifications regarding both the issues and also about the processes those are going to be started during and after the pendemic situation is put under control.
In fact, both these important issues are major concerns for all the inhabitants of Jammu and Kashmir and especially the Kashmiri Pandits, the indigenous people of Kashmir. The claim to the Indegenous character of the Kashmiri Pandit community is duly valid due to the civilisational flow and historicity coupled with the living cultural tradition of the Pandits inspite of their ethnic cleansing and exile for the last three decades.
It needs to be cleared here that the leftover original inhabitants of the erstwhile state of J&K (in the Notification) who hold state subject certificates but are not living in the UT for the last 15 years is a grave flaw in the Notification It will neither stand the scrutiny of municipal law of the land nor the international law in this context, since the Indegenous people can’t be divested of their birth right to live in their land of origin. It is a serious error of judgement and doesn’t include the Kashmiri Pandits alone. In fact the Notification grants the domicile rights, even after the amendments, to four categories of people in Jammu and Kashmir. One category includes specifically, the Kashmiri Pandits, in the form and nomenclature of the “Registered Migrants” with the Relief Commissioner’s office at Jammu.
This fifth or the leftover catagory of people includes hereditary residents belonging to all faiths and regions in the UT, Kashmiri Muslims and Dogras included. It is an issue of natural justice and so needs to be taken up forthwith. The Gazette Notification is silent about this important and an integral section of the J&K society. The people of Jammu and Kashmir since times immemorial have been going to the regions outside their state for education, business, jobs and other assignments. Time to time persecutions have also led to their exodus from their homestead. Sometimes they would come back to their state and live and settle there once again. However, since 1947, the time of our independence, this process did not stop.
The original inhabitants and the hereditary residents who posessed the certificate of state subject of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state continue to live outside Jammu and Kashmir in many parts of India and the world. Since they are not in a position to prove their stay of 15 years in the state/UT, hence they are not covered by the new Notification on Domicile issue. Similarly, most of them are also not registered as “migrants” with the office of the Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner. In such a situation, this vast chunk of our brethren belonging to Jammu and Kashmir state ceases to be the Domicile of the UT of J&K, though they possess the Hereditary State Subject certificates as well.
As per a rough estimate, there are half a million of such people living all round the world since 1947 and they originally belong to the divisions of Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh and parts of the occupied land of Jammu and Kashmir. All such people among them who possess valid state subject certificates of J&K, the progeny of their blood and the daughters-in-law in their families have a natural and legal right to claim the Domicile status, irrespective of whether they are included in the Notification or not. It is time to take up the matter with the Government forthwith without any delay.
The second important issue comprises the Delimitation issue, the process for which has been initiated. This author raked up this issue even before the Lok Sabha elections of 2019 very seriously. Three decades of exile is a huge time for everyone to realize that the exiled Pandit community needs special attention and support to regain what it has lost. The Governments and the political parties have undoubtedly failed in their duties to think beyond relief and temporary rehabilitation of the Pandit community. The aspirations of the community have taken a back seat, unfortunately, in their priorities about Kashmir. Three decades of time changes generations and the generational shift should also be followed by a rethinking on the subject. The Kashmiri Pandits are supposed to take fresh initiatives keeping in view their aspirations in context of delimitation in Jammu & Kashmir.
The political parties also as well as the Governments can play a very positive role to bring back Kashmiri Pandits into the mainstream of political and electoral processes by taking some bold and unconventional decisions on the subject. In order to accommodate the aspirations of the neglected sections of the society, our constitution has paved a way in terms of ‘Reservations’. But reservations in electoral scheme in respect of a religious and ethnic group are not constitutionally possible. The truth is that the founding fathers of the constitution could not visualize a situation where the citizens of the country could be turned into refugees in their own country for decades of their life.
In such a situation, the Delimitation Commission, political parties and the government have a primary and fundamental role to usher in a formidable scheme or a format which could take care of the aspirations of the community as well as to enable the political parties perform their role in this context.
It is in this particular context that the political parties and the social arena need rethinking and review. The intent expressed in the oft-repeated statement over the last three decades of exile of the Kashmiri Pandits that “Kashmir is incomplete without Kashmiri Pandits” need to be translated into reality in the political terms. This can be achieved by ensuring that the Pandits, the indigenous people of the Kashmir valley, are represented in the Parliament and the Assembly of the State.
As a first major step in this direction, the Kashmiri Pandits are required to be made an integral and important part of the political and electoral process through the Delimitation Commission. An appeal last time to all political parties in the state to give their mandate in respect of the ‘Srinagar Parliamentary constituency’ to the Kashmiri Pandit alone which would ensure the representation of the displaced community in the Lok Sabha, unfortunately, didn’t work because the political parties didn’t want to go beyond their set priorities.
In order to send a strong message that the displaced and exiled community belongs to the socio-political milieu of the Kashmir valley, the Pandit community needs to be provided a clear way to enter the Representative Houses as the representatives of the people. After all they are seven lakh state subject people of the state scattered due to the miserable failure of the State. Kashmiri Pandits are believers of peace, brotherhood and forgiveness though they do not forget the facts of history as a part of their DNA trait. More so, forgetting history is committing to repeat it. This time, for all practical purposes, the Governments, political parties and the Muslim majority community may not be able to take a slip through a safety-valve, in this regard, in context of the Kashmiri Pandits.
I hope and expect that the Pandits will play their role very well in order to think in terms of getting included and accommodated in pure political terms for the ‘well deserved due’ that has been longing them for the last seven decades, both in the Kashmir valley as well as outside the Kashmir valley. I make a strong recommendation that one Kashmiri Pandit be associated with the Delimitation Commission who can take the special class of Indegenous people’s aspirations to the logical conclusion. Other things will follow the core issue.
 

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Courtesy: Ashwani Kumar Chrungoo and Daily Excelsior:  14th May, 2020