iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir “hamara hai”, Home Minister Amit Shah said in the parliament during a discussion on the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization (Amendment) Bill, 2023 and Jammu and Kashmir Reservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023 on Wednesday, December 6. Both bills were passed by a voice vote later. Shah said that Jammu and Kashmir suffered due to the “blunders” of India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Congress party MPs staged a walkout after this statement.
“The problem of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir occurred because of Pandit Nehru. Otherwise, that part would have belonged to Kashmir. Nehruji was responsible for POK. Nehru ji admitted it was his mistake. But it was not a mistake, it was a blunder to lose so much land of this country,” Shah added amid vocal protests from Congress leaders. Shah said that 45,000 people died due to the imposition of Article 370 and this was why the Narendra Modi government repealed it. He added that Article 370 was “the root cause” of separatism and terrorism in J&K.
“Kashmir suffered for several years because of the two blunders during the tenure of PM Jawaharlal Nehru. The biggest mistake was that when our forces were winning, a cease-fire was announced and PoK came into existence. Had the ceasefire been delayed by three days, PoK would have been a part of India,” Shah said, amid loud protest from the opposition leaders of parliament.
While tabling the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization (Amendment) Bill, 2023 in the Lok Sabha, Shah said that earlier, Jammu had 37 seats but now it has 43, while Kashmir had 46 seats, now it has 47 seats. The Delimitation Commission, set up by the government of India for the delimitation of assembly and parliamentary constituencies in J&K, has reserved 24 seats for PoK. “We have reserved 24 seats for PoK… woh hamara hai, hamne woh reserve rakhi hai (PoK is ours, so we have reserved the seats),” he said.
Shah said that the era of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir started after the 1980s and the people who had lived there for generations were displaced but no one cared about them. He said that 46,631 families and 1,57,967 people were displaced from the state. “This bill is to give them rights and representation in the state assembly,” he added. He added that those who had the responsibility to stop all this used to holiday in England. “If they had ended terrorism in the beginning without vote bank politics and by taking precise measures then there would have been no need to bring this bill today. The displaced people live as refugees in other parts of their own country.”
Shah said that in 1947, 31,779 families were displaced from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to J&K and out of these, 26,319 families started living in Jammu and Kashmir and 5,460 families started living in other parts of the country. He said that after the wars of 1965 and 1971, 10,065 families were displaced and overall, 41,844 families were displaced.
“The Delimitation Commission went everywhere in J&K. The representatives of several communities, including Kashmiri migrants and people displaced in PoK, had submitted applications seeking their representation in the state assembly. I am happy that the commission has taken cognizance of this and the Election Commissioner of India has nominated two seats in state assembly for Kashmiri migrants and one seat for a person displaced in PoK, which has been occupied unauthorizedly by Pakistan,” he said.
The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization (Amendment) Bill, seeks to nominate two members from the Kashmiri migrant community and one representing people displaced from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir to the J&K legislative assembly. Shah said that the two bills were aimed at giving justice to those who had been deprived of rights over the past 70 years. Shah told the House that now there will be five nominated members in the J&K Assembly.
