Jammu & Kashmir live updates: GOI remove all provisions of Article 370

Kashmir: Online open, 3.7 lakh get domicile in a month, 78% of them in Jammu

Sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that between June 22, when the online facility was launched, and last week, over 2.9 lakh people were granted domicile certificates in Jammu against 79,300 in the Valley.

Written By Deeptiman Tiwary | New Delhi |
Updated: August 1, 2020 9:21:27 am

IN THE month following the launch of the online mode for applying for domicile certificates in the Union Territory under the new rules, over thrice as many people from Jammu have been granted the same as compared to Kashmir.

While the majority of the 3.7 lakh-odd granted domicile certificates are already permanent residents of the Union Territory, a significant proportion have been given out to those who despite living or serving in the state for years were not considered residents of the state due to provisions of Artice 35A, which now stands repealed.

Sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that between June 22, when the online facility was launched, and last week, over 2.9 lakh people were granted domicile certificates in Jammu against 79,300 in the Valley.

Apprehensions had been expressed by some quarters that the change in domicile rules for J&K, stripped of its special status on August 5 last year, was meant to force a demographic change in the Union territory by allowing entry to outsiders.

Sources said the domicile certificates issued are proportionate to the applications received. “There is no region-specific delay. More applications have been received from Jammu so more certificates have been issued there,” a J&K administration official said.

The domicile certificates make people eligible to apply for jobs and admission into educational institutions in the Union territory, and officials believe a majority of applicants aim for the same.

Among those who have received domicile certificates are West Pakistan refugees, numbering over 20,000, nearly all of whom are reportedly covered now, and 2,000-odd sanitation workers brought and settled in the state but never accorded basic rights like voting. “They were denied citizenship and hence access to education and jobs,” an MHA official said, adding that 700 Gurkhas too have been provided domicile certificates.

As per the new rules that came into force in May this year, people who have been living in J&K for 15 years, those who have studied in the Union territory for seven years, or appeared in Class 10 or 12 examination from an educational institution in the region, as well as their children, are eligible for domicile. Also eligible are children of officials of the Central government, all India services, banks and PSUs, statutory bodies and Central universities, who have served in J&K for 10 years.

Besides, all Permanent Resident Certificate holders are automatically eligible.

Despite the setback due to Covid-19, sources said, domicile certificates were not the only matter on which the government has kept its promise. “The most significant change has been the amendment extending the benefits of reservation to many deserving categories. Paharis had been demanding it for decades, and are now eligible for 4% reservation. Economically Weaker Sections will get 10%, the income ceiling for backward classes has been increased from Rs 4.5 lakh per annum to Rs 8 lakh, and benefits have been extended to residents along the International Border. Also reservation in the Assembly has been extended to Scheduled Tribes,” the MHA official said, adding that the government had also begun disbursing Rs 5 lakh financial assistance to West Pakistan refugees.

The official claimed there had been a 262 % increase in minority scholarships, with over 4.76 lakh beneficiaries since August last year, a 100 % jump in SC/ST pre-matric scholarships, and 20% increase in OBC post-matric scholarships with over 7.42 lakh beneficiaries overall (including minorities).

On the job front — a key concern among locals post Article 35 A, that empowered the J&K legislature to define its permanent residents and their special rights and privileges — the progress has been more tardy. At the time of the abrogation of Article 370, the administration had announced that 50,000 posts would be filled up soon. But, with over 84,000 vacancies, the government has only just begun recruitment for the first phase, for 10,000 posts.

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Online open, 3.7 lakh get domicile in a month, 78% of them in Jammu

Sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that between June 22, when the online facility was launched, and last week, over 2.9 lakh people were granted domicile certificates in Jammu against 79,300 in the Valley.
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- PRTP GWD
 
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In Kashmir, the axe likely to fall on Urdu as the official language

By Gulzar Bhat

August 05, 2020 at 2:33 PM

Madhav Kohli, a Jammu based social activist, struck a hornet’s nest with his Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking Hindi as the official language of the newly carved Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir. On July 8, a Division Bench of the High Court issued notice on the UT administration and posted the next hearing on October 7, 2020. “Official records are in Urdu but we do not have proficiency in the language and don’t understand what exactly goes into such records,” Kohli explained.

On August 5, 2019 when the special status of Jammu and Kashmir was withdrawn, uncertainty prevailed over the fate of Urdu. According to section 47 of the J&K Reorganisation Act, it is up to the new Legislative Assembly of the Union Territory of J&K “to adopt one or more of the languages in use in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir or Hindi as the official language or languages to be used for all or any of the official purposes”.

Urdu has been the official language of Jammu and Kashmir since 1889, when Maharaja Pratap Singh, the third Dogra ruler of the erstwhile state of J & K had replaced Persian with Urdu.

“The Maharaja had then faced resistance from Persian knowing people. But Urdu was touted as a more convenient language for communication across various language groups and communities in the region”, recalls Zaffar Iqbal Manhas, former Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages.

Although eight major languages--Kashmiri, Dogri, Urdu, Gojri, Ladakhi, Pahari, Balti and Hindi--are spoken in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, Urdu has served as the lingua franca over the last 131 years.

Prominent Jammu based Urdu bard Pritpal Singh Betab, who has also written half a dozen books, says Urdu has been a language-of-connect among people in all the three regions of erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir. “Urdu has become a part of our culture. Replacing it is a frivolous exercise”, he adds.

In the 2011 census, the Valley had a population of 68,88,475 while the population of Jammu stood at 53,78,538. The percentage of Urdu knowing people was substantially higher. “Around 90 percent of the people could speak Urdu while more than 70 percent could read and write in Urdu in J & K”, points out Manhas.

A day before Jammu and Kashmir was poised to split into two federally controlled territories on October 31, 2019, BJP national secretary Tarun Chugh was quoted as saying, “The best thing is that Urdu will no longer be the first and official language of state”.

The official website of the Department of Information and Public Relations suggests that 59 Urdu daily newspapers are published from Kashmir division and 24 from Jammu. The number of Urdu weeklies from Jammu is higher at 39 compared to 29 in Kashmir.

“Urdu newspapers enjoy good readership across Jammu division and over the last several years, several new Urdu language newspapers hit the stands”, says Sohail Kazmi, editor-in chief of Jammu based Daily Taskeen. “Some Urdu newspapers and magazines published from Punjab and Delhi are also widely read in the region,” he added.

But both British rulers and the Bharatiya Jan Sangh have been prone to identify Urdu as the language of Muslims. BJP has amplified the communalisation of the language.

Valley based writer Mohammad Yousuf Taing feels it is unfair to identify Urdu with only Muslims. A large number of Hindus in the region continue to write in Urdu, he points out.

Bahar-e-Gulshan-e-Kashmir is a multi-volume anthology of poetry and prose in Urdu written by Kashmiri Pandits settled outside Jammu and Kashmir. Published in the early 1930s, the book carries poems of prominent poets like Anand Narayan Mulla, Pandit Brijnarayan Chakbast, Pandit Brijlal Nehru Watan, Dewan Amarnath Madan and Brij Krishan Koul.

Last year, on Hindi Diwas, Home Minister Amit Shah claimed that Hindi alone could unite the country. Although the statement drew flak from different quarters, it was in sync with RSS and BJP’s doctrine of ‘One nation, one culture, one language’.

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In Kashmir, the axe likely to fall on Urdu as the official language

By replacing Urdu as the official language, BJP will strike at not just the language and culture but also at Urdu media and jobs
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Manoj Sinha appointed as new lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir
President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday appointed former Union minister Manoj Sinha as the next Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. He will replace Girish Chandra Murmu who resigned on Wednesday.

In a release confirming the same, the President house said, “The President has been pleased to appoint Shri Manoj Sinha, to be the Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir with effect from the date he assumes charge of his office vice Shri Girish Chandra Murmu.”

President Kovind accepted Murmu’s resignation on Thursday. There is buzz that he is going to be the next Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India.

The move to appoint Sinha as the next Lieutenant Governor is aimed at reaching out to the people of the union territory with a soft political touch, something that Murmu, a former bureaucrat, could not achieve during his nine-month tenure.

After Satyapal Malik, who was governor of erstwhile J&K state, Sinha is the new political touch to the Valley - both Malik and Sinha are grassroot politicians with the latter an alma mater of IIT-BHU, Varanasi. He lost the last Lok Sabha election to strongman and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Afzal Ansari.

Sinha has represented the parliamentary constituency of Ghazipur in eastern Uttar Pradesh thrice in the Lok Sabha. He has also served as minister of communications and minister of state for Railways.

After the stunning victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, Sinha’s name was among the contenders for the post of chief minister. He eventually lost the post to Yogi Adityanath, a five-time MP from Gorakhpur.

He was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1999. During his student days, Sinha was the students’ union president in the Banaras Hindu University.

As minister of state for Railways, Sinha handled key assignments including the task to connect several cities in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
www.hindustantimes.com

Manoj Sinha appointed as Centre’s political touch to Jammu and Kashmir

Manoj Sinha is now the new lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir. Murmu submitted his resignation to President Kovind on Wednesday.
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How 4G, EC, and a call for curfew may have led to change of J&K Lt Governor

By Ishfaq-ul-Hassan

Srinagar: A raging controversy over his statement on 4G internet, rap by the Election Commission, and a call for curfew ahead of August 5 seemingly led to the recall of former Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Girish Chandra Murmu.

Murmu was appointed first Lieutenant Governor of newly carved Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir in October 2019. Ten months after, he has now been replaced by BJP politician and former union minister from Uttar Pradesh, Manoj Sinha.

Murmu is tipped to take over as Comptroller and Auditor General replacing Rajiv Mehrishi who is superannuating this week.

A career bureaucrat, Murmu had off late courted major controversies by his free-wheeling opinion on contentious issues including restoration of 4G internet and holding elections in Jammu and Kashmir.

On July 26, Murmu told a national newspaper that the high-speed 4G internet will not create any problem.

“I feel that 4G will not be a problem. I am not afraid of how people will use this. Pakistan will do its propaganda, whether it is 2G or 4G. It will always be there… But I don’t see an issue,” Murmu told The Indian Express in an interview.

This was contrary to the central government’s stand on the issue. In an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court (SC) on July 21, Centre had said that a special committee set up to examine the demands for restoring 4G services, following the orders of the court on May 11, had met twice on May 15 and June 10 and decided that “no further relaxation of the restrictions on Internet services, including 4G services, would be carried out at present”.

After Murmu’s statement, Centre was so embarrassed that it had to tell the SC that it will verify media reports claiming that Lieutenant Governor advocated the restoration of 4G internet services.

If it was not enough, Murmu’s statement that elections in the Union territory could be held after the ongoing delimitation exercise evoked a sharp response from the Election Commission.

In a strong statement, the ECI said it would be proper for authorities other than Election Commission to refrain from making such statements which virtually tantamount to interfering with the Constitutional mandate of the Election Commission.

“Many things have to be taken into account for holding polls, including topography, weather, sensitivities arising out of regional and local festivities. In the constitutional scheme of things, only the commission can decide the timing of the polls,” the statement said.

Sources said the differences between Murmu and Chief Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam had created two power centers within the bureaucracy resulting in administrative inertia. There were reports that Murmu had transferred all officers said to be close to Chief Secretary. Plus, sources said, files were pending for long, and decisions were not implemented on the ground.

“All these things were factored in and it was decided that Murmu would be suitable for the post of CAG. Sinha being politician is being seen as a go-getter who could engage with the peeved mainstream leaders,” said an official.

Murmu, according to him, had off late begun to “say things that went beyond his brief.”

“The decision to enforce curfew ahead of August 5 was the last straw. It projected that the situation in Kashmir had hardly improved. The decision backfired badly forcing the administration to call off the curfew,” the official said.

He added that with his exit, the Centre has “in a way agreed that the approach adopted in Kashmir for the last one year hasn’t worked and they have to wipe off the blackboard and chalk out something new for the valley.”

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Ample evidence by NIA, says SC; cancels Watali’s bail — The Kashmir Monitor

‘Link between Hurriyat, militants’
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There is a reduction in terrorist recruits after August 5, 2019. That is a success story
Tariq Mohand, a carpenter from village Heff in Shopian district, was abducted by terrorists on the evening of July 8, 2018. This village in South Kashmir has been home to a number of terrorists over the years. Tariq was the cousin of a terrorist named Bilal Mohand who was killed in an encounter in May 2018. The terrorists who abducted Tariq tortured him through the night. His body was recovered from a nearby village next morning.

Tariq was buried in a normal graveyard in his village. There was huge resentment in the village against this gruesome act and the terrorists were condemned unequivocally. Two days after killing him, the terrorists labelled Tariq as a “martyr”. His body was exhumed four days after the murder and buried in the “martyrs’ graveyard” of the village. His family, including his pregnant wife, had to undergo much trauma that week. Tariq’s unfortunate death and the pain suffered by his family point to the deep scars that terrorism leaves on people’s lives in the Valley.

Over the last 30 years, such tragedies have occurred at regular intervals in the Kashmir Valley. The most egregious of such excesses take place when civilians labelled as “informers” are murdered. Over the years, there has been an increased tendency to understand the impact of terrorism by referring to incidents that involve the killing of a considerable number of civilians or security personnel. In the same vein, the number of terrorists neutralised is seen as an indicator of success against terrorism. The most important aspect of this phenomenon, checking the recruitment of young boys to terrorist ranks, is often ignored. The process of recruitment is not a very complex one. The recruits to various terror organisations in the aftermath of the killing of Burhan Wani were mostly from South Kashmir.

A cursory look at the data can help put the process in perspective. The number of new recruits for the years 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 were 72, 95, 147, 201 and 140 respectively. The number of terrorists killed during these years was 94,136, 209, 246 and 152 respectively. The data shows that the number of recruits to terrorism in 2016, 2017 and 2018 were about the same as the number of terrorists killed the previous year. The success against terrorism after the abrogation of Article 370 doesn’t only lie in the number of terrorists killed by the security forces this year. The most uplifting aspect of this success relates to the number of boys who have been recruited as terrorists this year — about 93. Compare this to the number of terrorists killed last year — 152. The difference of nearly 60 recruits is what defines the success in arresting the upheaval of terrorism in Kashmir. In fact, after August 5, 2019, there was a visible fall in terrorist recruitment.

A section of media has tried to equate the large number of successful encounters this year with the rise in terrorism. These successful encounters are a result of the generation of actionable intelligence as well as clean execution by the security forces without causing any collateral damage. But the story that is not in the limelight is the painstaking work undertaken at the grass roots to stop recruitment. More than 80 per cent of the new recruits belong to the age group 24 to 32. The toughest job is to convince and counsel these youngsters to not join terror organisations. In post-August 5 Kashmir, officers at the ground have more freedom and space to implement their vision and check the rise in recruitments to terrorist ranks. The important task is to make these adult protagonists have an informed and mature relationship with their future. Their present situation is quite clear to them, the need now is to invest in their future. That is what takes the maximum effort.

The most important development in the Valley after August 5, 2019 has been the drastic fall in the number of civilians pelting stones on security forces during encounters. This downfall has a positive spinoff on the general environment because a very small number of civilians have got injured near encounter sites. A large number of new recruits since 2016 had been stone-pelters at some point. As stone-pelting has reduced, the number of such people who participate in such acts has also gone down. These acts also had legal implications for the youngsters, so the fall in stone-pelting is directly proportional to the reduced number of criminal cases being filed. Many a time, a chronic stone-pelter would take the leap towards “greater criminality” when his future prospects got impacted as a result of being involved in stone-pelting. The Jammu and Kashmir Police has worked at the grass roots to prevent this leap: It has counselled youngsters and involved the community in its endeavours.


Among the frailties of the Kashmir watchers is their failure to see the success against terrorism in terms of the reduction in terrorist recruits after August 5, 2019 — or looking away when the facts contradict their beliefs. Looking at terrorism in Kashmir from the perspective of victims of terror like the family of Tariq Mohand isn’t enough. This narrative does not take into account those who ruin their careers after being taken in by stories that romanticise the death of young boys.
indianexpress.com

There is a reduction in terrorist recruits after August 5, 2019. That is a success story

Looking at terrorism in Kashmir from the perspective of victims of terror like the family of Tariq Mohand isn’t enough. This narrative does not take into account those who ruin their careers after being taken in by stories that romanticise the death of young boys.
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