Srinagar: Former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti on Monday hit out at the administration for opening the union territory to real estate investors, alleging that it is being done to change the demography of the region.
The comments came after the Jammu and Kashmir administration signed 39 MoUs worth Rs 18,300 crore with the country’s real investors for the development of housing and commercial projects in the union territory.
“Once again the true intentions of the government are brought to the fore. While offering to secure the land, jobs, domicile laws & identity of the people of Ladakh, J&K is being put up for sale. People of Jammu should beware, ‘investors’ will buy up land in Jammu long before Kashmir,” Abdullah wrote on Twitter.
Mehbooba Mufti tweeted, “J&K’s special status was illegally revoked to dehumanise, dispossess & disempower the only Muslim majority state in India. GOIs brazen loot & sale of our resources shows that the sole motive is to annihilate our identity & change the demography.”
Apni Party president Mohammad Altaf Bukhari said the efforts aiming holistic development and job creation in Jammu and Kashmir are welcome but not at the cost of domicile laws that safeguard land and employment rights of its permanent residents.
Reacting to the Jammu and Kashmir Real Estate Summit (2021), Bukhari said that Apni Party will never allow any such move that undermines the rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
“Our party will always welcome any efforts that will foster progress and prosperity in Jammu and Kashmir. But at the same time we are pledged to resist any plans that will do away with the exclusive rights of the people on their land and jobs,” he remarked.
Taking exception to the “controversial agenda” of the Jammu summit in which the term “permanent resident of the State” has been omitted from J&K Development Act, Bukhari said that the exclusion of this legal guarantee is totally unacceptable to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
“At a time when the unemployment rate of J&K is over 21 percent as compared to the national average of 7.8 percent, the government of India must address this burgeoning issue by creating more job opportunities rather than focusing on the sale of non agricultural land to non-domiciles of Jammu and Kashmir,” he remarked.
