Srinagar: National Conference (NC) Member of Parliament from Anantnag Justice (Retd.) Hasnain Masoodi today sought restoration of abridged constitutional and democratic rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
While speaking on the discussion on the motion of thanks on the address of the President in Lok Sabha, Masoodi told Parliament that President’s address didn’t mention anything about restoration of democratic rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
“President’s address mentions about Qazigund tunnel but remains silent over the very fact that people of Jammu and Kashmir have not been allowed to have their government of choice from past four years,” Masoodi said.
He said that while on one hand, “we claim to be the largest democracy, on the other hand, people of J&K are denied their democratic rights.”
He said the address falls short of expectations and is oblivious of a road map towards the restoration of the abridged constitutional rights and democracy in J&K. Expressing concern over the delay in the restoration of people’s government in Jammu and Kashmir, he contended that India was a union of states and that every constituent unit of the country has a distinct character and identity.
He argued that there can be no trade-off between the political aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and development. He further said that if officialdom was that fitting an alternative to democracy, the GOI should have handed over the state of affairs in all the five poll bound states to a coterie of few officials and justify it by flaunting developmental figures.
Drawing the attention of the house towards raging unemployment in J&K, Masoodi said, “There should have been a mention of the scathing unemployment rate in J&K, which is much higher than that of the country. The address has given a miss to the regularization of lakhs of daily wagers, contractual, need based employees, youth corps, Rehbar e Taleem and seasonal teachers. Even today, people’s representatives in Kishtwar are staging protests on the denial of employment opportunities to local youth in central projects. We were expecting that that the address will give a road map to solve these issues but it has failed on that account as well.”
Referring to the underway delimitation process, he said that when the opposition benches raise the issue of Pegasus, the treasury benches evade the issue by citing the sub-juice nature of the matter. “Isn’t the J & K Reorganization Act sub-judice? Isn’t it unconstitutional to go ahead with the delimitation process, which is a consequence of the constitutionally suspect enactments of 5, August 2019? There are ten pleas challenging these enactments in the apex court. All the pleas have been entertained and passed on to a constituent bench. Why is this government then going ahead with this exercise, which is a consequence of such a law which is constitutionally suspect and facing judicial scrutiny,” he questioned.
Masoodi said the ruling government was working on a single minded mission to change the demographics of Jammu and Kashmir. “Every single entity of J&K is under attack. Our land, our jobs, our culture; now it is the economy, which is under attack. Allowing custom free import of fruit into the country is a step towards crushing the market of J&K fruit. All these attacks are being carried out with a single mission to change the demographics of J&K,” he said.
