BLUNT BUTCHER / ANCHOR
The fresh registration of migrants from the Kashmir Valley with Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner in Jammu is raising several questions, the answers to which lie with Peoples’ Democratic Party, Bharatiya Janata Party and National Conference, to name a few. The move, at the outset, is a candid admission of the BJP partnered PDP government that the situation has worsened and reversed to the times of early nineties wherein people are now feeling threatened to desert their homes and hearths-this time Muslims. In February 2017, over 110 people (families) of Muslim community are reported to have been registered as new migrants after ‘proper verification’ by a screening panel. An order to register new migrants was issued by Financial Commissioner, Relief and Rehabilitation recently which said “the Committee will recommend the registration of bonafide migrants who have migrated or may migrate due to threat to them or to their families from the militants.
It will be interesting to watch how Addl General Secretary of National Conference Dr Sheikh Mustaffa Kamal and his likes like Engineer Rashid would react to the migration of majority community, as they have based their post-1990 politics on the assumption that Governor Jagmohan had conspired the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits to, what they say, carry out genocide of Kashmiri Muslims. They have, however, never answered as to why 2,252 are Muslim families and 1758 fled from the Valley and enrolled themselves as migrants in Jammu.
The people like Mustaffa Kamal and Engineer Rashid ought to have sought a white paper with regard to Muslim migrants in Jammu to ascertain whether they too had become tools in the hands of Jagmohan to leave their homes and hearths. They should have also demanded the details of these Muslim families to see whether they have actually relocated to Jammu or were drawing cash assistance and relief back in their homes. Some of the Muslim migrant youth have got jobs under the Prime Minister’s Package in the Valley and admission in various professional colleges outside the State and it, therefore, necessary to have their academic details as to whether they had pursued their academics in their places of temporary settlements outside the Valley. This will offset the impression and general perception that most of the non-Hindu families are registered as migrants only on papers while actually they reside in their respective dwelling place in Kashmir. It is important to know because Kashmiri migrant has become synonymous with only Kashmiri Pandits. It has become a new-found identity for the hapless displaced Hindus of the Valley, who are languishing in plains, far away from their homes. Kashmiri migrant is a most maligned term, which raises eyebrows of friends and foes, when it comes to counting the ‘doles, ‘packages’ like rehabilitation and employment, cash assistance and educational incentives etcetera’ they are purportedly getting but when it comes to suffering, they are left on their own.
Knowing about the status of the post-1990 non-Hindu migrants is also important to put the record straight, as else the move to have fresh registration of migration will get mired in controversies. Already questions are being raised by various sections of Kashmiri Pandits, asking if the situation is not conducive for their return why BJP should clamour for having temporary accommodations in various towns of the Valley. Why should the Chief Minister plead with the Prime Minister to allocate early funds for such accommodations if situation is so precarious in the Valley that even Muslims feel unsafe there? Who the coalition government is going to accommodate in the newly raised accommodations under the Prime Minister’s package?
Believe various vocal sections of Kashmiri Pandits and one gets to know that the poor Indian tax payers’ money is going to be spent on the accommodations where at least they are not going to live, given the widespread resentment shown by separatists, secessionists and the mainstreamists last summer. They say that they made a common cause in creating obstacles for the return of minority community back to the Valley. They have gone further saying that the proposed accommodation in Kashmir will be utilised for rehabilitating the migrants other than Kashmiri Pandits, which is why new registration has been set in motion that they term as a clever and sinister move. These are wild and sweeping allegations, which need to be countered by the PDP-BJP government promptly and effectively.
