Islamabad: While condemning Indian government’s moves for demographic changes in the Muslim-majority occupied Kashmir in line with the ruling BJP’s Hindu-supremacist agenda, Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) chairman Khalid Rahman has warned that New Delhi can open foreign missions in the held region to claim legitimacy of its 2019 illegal annexation.
“Ostensibly, the Modi-led Indian government’s grand design is the establishment of diplomatic missions in Kashmir valley to assert its claim to the occupied region in the wake of the Aug 5, 2019, autonomy revocation. I urge the Pakistani government to expedite its actions on the diplomatic front to counter this design,” Rehman told a meeting of the IPS-Working Group on Kashmir (IPS-WGK) here on Wednesday.
The IPS chairman said change in the demography of the occupied Kashmir was the linchpin of the BJP’s Hindu-supremacist agenda and the Indian government was moving towards it through coercive action.
He said a new phase of struggle had begun in the held region following its August 5, 2019, annexation to India. “The resistance sentiment among Kashmiris has refused to die despite coercive Indian actions,” he said.
Khalid Rehman said under the new laws imposed by the Modi government, domicile certificates were being awarded to the non-locals and even the children of Indian government employees, who had served in the region for 10 years, were eligible to purchase land and properties.
He said the Indian army and paramilitary forces, which had illegally occupied tens of thousands of acres of private and public land in Kashmir, had been given legal impunity against usurping and occupying any land, which they deemed strategic under new laws.
Expert on international law from the Legal Forum for Oppressed Voices of Kashmir (LFOVK) Nasir Qadri complained that Urdu was no more the only official language of the valley as the government had added Hindi, Dogri, English and Kashmiri as other official languages.
He flayed the Indian government’s action of setting up the Jammu and Kashmir Industrial Development Corporation to acquire any land in the disputed valley and said the corporation could use the government to invoke a land acquisition law if needed placing it above the law as no court could take action against the corporation in that respect.
Senior Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Gillani maintained that the demand for restoration of special status of the valley echoed among the people of Jammu and Kashmir including Ladakh as per the report issued by the former Indian foreign minister Yashwant Sinha-led commission.
He also said Kashmiris declared the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution as imposition of Hindutva agenda of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the occupied region.
Former ambassador and IPS vice-chairman Syed Abrar Hussain said the removal of the special status for occupied Kashmir showed the Indian designs to change the demography of the region and that 1.8 million bogus or fake domiciles had already been issued.
He pushed Pakistani government for unveiling the nefarious Indian designs for Kashmir to show the world the real face of the Modi government. The other speakers, who included former AJK minister and general secretary of the IPS-WGK Farzana Yaqoob, former ambassador and senior research associate at IPS Tajammul Altaf and GM (operations) at IPS Naufil Shahrukh, said the Indian government was bringing officers from outside to the Kashmir valley to run the government machinery amid very thin representation of the local Muslims in the bureaucracy.
They said a panel headed by a top police officer would review cases of the government employees in the held Kashmir, who could be sacked under a law. The panellists also resented under new laws under which applications for government jobs would see harsher scrutiny as applicants were directed to produce a comprehensive ‘satisfactory report’ from the criminal investigation department for selection.
