The Centre is moving to amend the J&K Reorganisation Act 2019 to reserve two seats in the J&K Legislative Assembly for ‘Kashmiri Migrants’ and one for displaced persons from Pakistan occupied Kashmir “so as to preserve their political rights as well as for their overall social and economic development”. These members will be nominated by the Lieutenant Governor.
Sources told The that the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill, 2023, will be introduced in the Lok Sabha.
After the recent delimitation process, the number of seats in the Legislative Assembly of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has gone up from 107 to 114, with nine seats reserved for Scheduled Tribes.
The new Bill will see an amendment to Section 14 of the existing Act and the insertion of two new sections — Sections 15 A and 15 B. While the amendment to Section 14 will substitute ‘107 seats’ in the Act to ‘114 seats’, Sections 15 A and 15 B detail the three reserved seats.
On the seat reserved for ‘Kashmiri Migrants’, the amended Bill says, “…Lieutenant Governor of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir may nominate not more than two members, one of whom shall be a woman, from the community of Kashmiri Migrants, to the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly”.
Section 15 B reads, “Lieutenant Governor of the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir may nominate one member from displaced persons from Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir to the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly”.
In the section on ‘Statement of Objects and Reasons’, the Bill says that “at the time of the militancy in the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir in the late eighties, particularly in Kashmir (Division) in 1989-90, a large number of people migrated from their ancestral places of residence, in Kashmir province particularly the Kashmiri Hindus and Pandits along with few families belonging to Sikh and Muslim communities”.
The Bill says that as per data available with the Government of J&K, 46,517 families with 1,58,976 persons have registered with the state’s Relief Organisation over the last three decades.
On people displaced from PoK, the Bill says, “in the wake of the 1947 Pakistani aggression in Jammu and Kashmir, thirty-one thousand seven hundred and seventy-nine families migrated from Pakistan occupied areas of Jammu and Kashmir to the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir. Of these, twenty-six thousand three hundred and nineteen families settled in the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir and remaining five thousand four hundred and sixty families moved out of the Jammu and Kashmir to other parts of the country. Further, during the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971, ten thousand and sixty-five more families were displaced from Chhamb Niabat area. Of these, three thousand and five hundred families were displaced during the 1965 war and six thousand five hundred and sixty-five families were displaced during the 1971 war. As such, a total of forty-one thousand eight hundred and forty-four families were displaced during 1947-48, 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars.”
