Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 11: Emphasizing for return and rehabilitation of migrants with all the dignity to their native Valley of Kashmir, the former Union Minister, Prof Chaman Lal Gupta said that no doubt it was a historic step of the Modi led NDA Government to rectify the seventy year old blooper of Article 370, but it was also of great national importance that the patriotic people who have been hounded out from their homes and hearth should be settled there without further delay.
In a statement, Prof Gupta said that one can understand the cleanse of the minorities from the theocratic Pak occupied areas of the State but it was highly intriguing that patriotic people who were natives, had been coerced and harassed to the extent that they had to migrate in mass in a hapless situation to become refugees within their own country. And that too, when all along there had been the Governments of those who had been claiming to be as seculars.
In the Valley of Kashmir, he said, the ratio of minorities in 1947 was about 14 percent. “After the end of monarchy in the State, when first eleven member Sheikh led Government was formed there were three ministers and six Legislators from the Valley who belonged to minorities. But over the years the representation of the minorities has dwindled to the extent that there was not a single member of the Assembly, not to say of any Minister in the last four ministries,” he elaborated.
Prof Gupta said that this sad situation put in question the secular credentials of not only that of National Conference and PDP but also that of the Congress, which headed the State Government during all these years.
Prof. Gupta impressed upon the dispensation of the Governor to identify the politicians who sabotaged the process of return and rehabilitation of these migrants as per the scheme of things as proposed in the Koul Committee Report and what had happened to the hundreds of crores spent out of the amount earmarked for the purpose.
He also sought an enquiry that how about ten thousand registrations have been there about the disposal of the properties of migrants despite the Act of 1997, prohibiting the sale and purchase of such properties and more so, the encroachment of the religious places.
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