Khanna castigates Centre, State Govts for refugees plight

Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Oct 29: BJP MP and Prabhari J&K Avinash Roy Khanna today castigated the Centre and State Governments for depriving the West Pak and PoK refugees of their basic rights.
Talking to media persons here along with BJP State president, Jugal Kishore Sharma its National Executive Member, Dr Nirmal Singh, party general secretaries Rajiv Jasrotia and Bali Bhagat, its State publicity secretary, Aseem Gupta and BJYM State president, Ravinder Raina, Mr Khanna said that the successive Governments in the State have ignored the West Pak and PoK refugees who are agitating for their rights over last 60 years.
Khanna who is participating the party’s refugee Adhikar Yatra in Jammu province said Dr Manmohan Singh, who is also a West Pak refugee can become the Prime Minister of India as his family settled outside J&K while three generations of the refugees who took shelter here perished since then in the hope of getting citizenship rights, right to vote and compensation of their properties left in PoK and West Pakistan some day.
The BJP leader said these refugees are still being subjected to discrimination and injustice which is totally unfortunate on the part of Government.
He also lambasted the UPA and State coalition for maintaining a silence over the plight of border people who are subjected to continuous shelling from across for over last two months.
He said the stoic silence maintained on the plight of these people and migrants who are victims of proxy war launched by Pakistan for last over two decades is also a cause of concern.
He said the people living along border have suffered many casualties due to border shelling besides Army and para military personnel were killed in this shelling and the border people also lost their cattle and are unable to harvest their crops.
Khanna said that the hapless border people have been left on the complete mercy of Pakistan and it indicates that both Union and State Governments have failed to discharge their constitutional obligations.
He announced that BJP will continue to raise the problems of refugees, migrants and border people in the appropriate forums.