Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Apr 22: The members of the Scheduled Caste (SC) community in Jammu Kashmir have suffered a lot during the rule of Congress and National Conference (NC), which treated them as vote bank but never understood their plight and grievances.
This was alleged by BJP State spokesperson, Balbir Ram Rattan, who also belongs to SC community, that anti SC approach of these parties have made them to prove their identity after every 12-15 years, which is unjustified and clear cut violation of human rights.
Elaborating, Balbir Ram Rattan said that any male or female born in a SC family has to get new category certificate under new SRO after every 12-15 years.
“I got my first SC certificate under SRO 272, second under SRO 126 and third one under SRO 294 and may be Government comes up with new SRO, which will hold my earlier certificate invalid”, Balbir said and questioned as to why the members belonging to the Scheduled Caste community have to prove their identity several times in their life time.
Not only this, any educated SC male or female, who wish to apply for job in J&K Government’s post, has to obtain certificate under one performa, while the performa for Central Government job is different, which means one has to possess two different certificates to classify them as Scheduled Castes.
Balbir further said that Scheduled Caste Commission has not been constituted in Jammu Kashmir, which too speaks of the indifferent attitude of the previous governments of Congress and NC towards SCs.
During three and half years rule of BJP in coalition, these issues were raised by party legislators but did not reach to any conclusion due to the collapse of the Government, Balbir said, adding that the party stands concerned for the welfare and upliftment of SCs and that the party national vice president Avinash Rai Khanna has taken up the issue with the State Governor and even written letter to him for looking into the matter and provide relief to the SCs from being harassed in the name of category certificate.
The matter has also been brought into the notice of Union MoS Dr. Jitendra Singh, Balbir informed.
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