BLUNT BUTCHER / ANCHOR
JAMMU: Kashmir centric mainstream leaders, especially the Congress, have been smart enough to keep Jammu people in good humour by eulogizing their secular credentials, saying the real ray of light actually emerged from this land. And, in the process, the demography of the temple city has hugely got changed during the past nearly twenty seven years.
As if the intriguing composition of population in Bathindi, Tawi Vihar, Sunjwan, Gujjar Nagar and other peripheral areas was not enough, the Congress partnered regimes, in coalition with both National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party, always became instrumental in accommodating and rehabilitating Rohingya Muslims in several colonies of the winter capital. The Congress leaders from Jammu have not only been collaborators but facilitators as well in supervising their settlement. Now that an FIR has been lodged against several service providing departments for ensuring drinking water, electricity and other facilities in Rohingya habitations, it is surprising why the ministers involved in the appeasement do not find their names in it.
The Congress is hugely reluctant to see deportation of Rohingyas from Jammu because they have been the perpetrators in settling them. As the winter capital woke up and protested over the alarming presence of Rohingyas, the Congress maintained stoic silence though Panthers Party and a segment of BJP took up the cause vociferously.
The Rohingya Muslims did not came to Jammu from moon all of sudden. They made a systematic influx in this city with the patronage of some Kashmir based NGOs and dubious persons to make Jammu their second, or perhaps the permanent home.
According to a national news agency, Molvi Yunus, a Rohingya Muslim is reported to have stated: “I crossed into Bangladesh from Burma (Myanmar) when persecution of Muslims became unbearable. From Calcutta I shifted with my family to Delhi where I begged for food to keep myself and my family alive. It was in Delhi that I met a Kashmiri who told me J&K was a state in India where Muslims lived in majority”.
Who was this Kashmiri? Why did he motivate them to come over to Jammu and Kashmir-precisely Jammu and not the Valley? In a city, where apprehensions about demographic change are gaining ground with settlement of a particular community in clusters in the periphery, the presence of Rohingyas has obviously become a major concern. Even as saner sections of the Jammu population kept expressing their fears about Rohingyas presence, the Congress ministers in successive governments did not bother to take cognizance. They would, on the contrary, move their heads in appreciation whenever the Kashmir centric leaders, from Saif-ud-Din Soz and Ghulam Nabi Azad down to Peerzada Sayeed and Ghulam Ahmed Mir, used to praise Jammuites for opening up arms for the people in distress. They are the leaders who never encouraged the people of Jammu, least to speak of hounded out Kashmiri Hindus, to get settled in the Valley.
The Congress partners of the Kashmir centric rulers became party to establishment of MLAs Colony in Jammu’s Roopnagar area but did they ever pitch for a similar colony for the legislators from this side of Banihal in the Valley? The answer will be in negative because their Kashmiri masters would have never encouraged this. Jammu Congress maintained criminal silence over assuaging the aspirations of the West Pakistan Refugees, living in the region for the past nearly seven decades, while their Kashmiri counterparts kept ranting hoarse over demographic change in case WPR were granted just domicile certificates (not to speak of permanent resident certificates). Like Kashmir Congressmen, the Jammu Congressmen never raised their voice against Rohingyas or Bangladeshis, who have penetrated deep in parts of the city. Believe reports and shocking details would come out how vulnerable these foreign nationals, illegally staying in the city, were for the security of the nation in general and Jammu in particular. It is shocking why these segments of settlers did not evoke any alarm for the Congress at the onset. The answer is simple. The Congress leadership of Jammu comforted them just to carve out a vote bank and further their appeasement policy towards a particular segment of society.
Being out of power, the Jammu Congress cannot escape the blame of having ditched own people-be it settlement of Rohingya Muslims or encroachment of forest land in the city peripheries where huge chunk of population from the Valley and the various other parts of the Jammu region have settled. It is because of the connivance of Congress leaders of Jammu that these ‘illegal colonies on forest land’ have got best ever roads and well laid out utility services like power and drinking water.
It is time for the people of Jammu to ask questions from Congressmen.
It is also time for the investigating agencies to fix the responsibility of former Congress ministers in facilitating various utility services to illegal settlers in the city of temples.
