Vows to Raise The Issue in Assembly, Seeks Cross-Party Push on Kashmir’s Share
Srinagar, Sep 16: J&K Peoples Conference President and MLA Handwara Sajad Gani Lone on Wednesday sharply criticised the prevailing reservation system in Jammu and Kashmir, calling it nothing short of “recruitment apartheid” and a calculated strategy to disempower and marginalise the inhabitants of the Kashmir valley.
Lone’s remarks come in the wake of the recently announced appointments to the Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Service (JKAS) and J&K Accounts (Gazetted) cadres, in which only 10 of the 55 selected officers hail from the Kashmir valley.
He said that with Kashmir accounting for approximately 56 percent of the total population of the Union Territory, the valley has received a mere 18 percent of the positions which is clearly a stark, unconscionable and deliberate disparity.
“This is recruitment apartheid,” Lone said in an unambiguous statement. “This is persecution of the inhabitants of the Kashmir valley. A strategy to disempower and marginalise. Its plain and simple.”
PC President also raised serious concerns about the optics surrounding the issuance of appointment orders, pointing out that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah himself signed and issued the orders. Lone argued that given the sensitive and politically charged nature of the recruitment outcome, the Chief Minister ought to have maintained a distance from the process. “Ideally, he should have kept away,” Lone said pointedly.
He was equally critical of what he described as a false sense of hope being offered to the people of Kashmir through a proposal reportedly sent by the elected government to the Union Government seeking a revision of the reservation framework.
He made clear that even if that proposal were approved in its current form, it would do precious little to address the root of the problem. “At best, Kashmir’s share will increase from 18 percent to 19 percent — against a population of 56 percent. That is not reform. That is cosmetic adjustment,” he said.
Lone reiterated that the reservation question in Jammu and Kashmir is fundamentally a Jammu versus Kashmir issue, rooted in what he characterises as the ethnic disempowerment of valley inhabitants.
He said the latest recruitment figures only reaffirm what he has argued all along that the system is not a product of oversight or administrative imbalance, but a deliberate and entrenched methodology to relegate the people of Kashmir to the margins of public life and governance.
Lone has announced that he will raise the matter in the Legislative Assembly through appropriate legislative devices and is calling on representatives across party lines to rally around this issue with the seriousness it demands.
“I wish and hope that we together, across party lines, are able to highlight the severity of this issue,” he said. “And call a spade a spade, which means saying it explicitly and unambiguously. The present reservation system in place is a methodology to disempower and relegate to the margins the inhabitants of Kashmir valley.”
