Kashmir problem

Apr 21, 2005

       Pak woman's claim rings warning bells  

                                                                              S.P. Sharma

                                                                     Tribune News Service

 

Jammu, April 20

A Pakistani woman, who travelled to Jammu and Kashmir in the inaugural bus service from Muzaffarabad to Srinagar on April 7, and has now resorted to legal recourse to reclaim the property that her father had left in the Kashmir valley in 1949 when he migrated to PoK, has sounded warning bells for those who were allotted evacuee properties after the country Partition.

 

The incident has created fear among the allottees residing in the evacuee properties for the past 58 years as the bus service has opened the door for their eviction in case of claimants coming here from Pakistan or the PoK areas.

 

Thousands of persons were allotted the evacuee properties after they migrated here from Pakistan in 1947. However, unlike other parts of the country the Jammu and Kashmir Government continues to officially maintain the evacuee properties.

 

A sword was hung over the heads of the allottees by the then National Conference government that introduced in 1982 the Resettlement Bill in the legislature seeking to restore the evacuee properties to the genuine claimants who returned here from Pakistan. The Bill was passed by the two Houses, but is currently challenged in the Supreme Court.

 

The issue was politicised by the Congress and the BJP during the elections in 1983 when the former managed to sweep the Assembly poll in the Jammu region by highlighting the disadvantages of the Bill. Hundreds of families, particularly in the Jammu region, face uncertainty because of the legislation.

 

Initially, the coalition government headed by Chief Minister Mufti Sayeed tried to dispel the apprehensions that starting the bus service would not affect the allottees. However, the action of the Pakistani woman, Fareeda Ghani, who has filed papers to reclaim her three properties in the valley, has created a peculiar situation.

 

Such happenings are not new in the state. A Pakistani national, who crossed into Poonch district from across the LoC, filed his papers for contesting the last Lok Sabha elections from the Jammu-Poonch constituency. However, a special scrutiny of his papers was held following media reports about his nationality and the Election Commission debarred him. However, the state government has not so far taken any action to either push him and his family members back or detain them for overstaying in India without valid documents.

 

Meanwhile, taking a serious note of the Pakistani national reclaiming her property, the state BJP has described it as a conspiracy hatched by the Congress-supported PDP to alter the demographic landscape of Jammu.

 

The vice-president of the BJP, Prof Hari Om, today expressed fear that those who were settled on evacuee properties in 1947 might get ousted once the visitors from PoK started reclaiming the properties they had left back during Partition.

 

He said that the state government had allowed these visitors to stay here beyond April 21 while they were supposed to return to their native land as part of the second trip of the bus service.