JKNPP protests settlement of immigrants in city

Jammu, January 29

The Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party today held a protest against the settlement of Rohingya and Bangladeshi Muslims here, alleging that it was a conspiracy to reduce the Dogras to a minority by engineering demographic changes.

Led by party chairman Harsh Dev Singh, activists wore black gowns printed with slogans like “Quit Jammu Rohingyas-Bangladeshis” and staged a protest against the state government for settling immigrants in Jammu, the home of the Dogra population.

“It is a conspiracy to reduce the Dogra population to a minority in their bastion, Jammu, by engineering demographic changes,” Harsh Dev told reporters. He claimed that the ingression and unlawful settlement of Rohingyas and Bangladeshis in Jammu was a grave threat to the cultural, historical and religious identity of the Dogras.

The party sought repatriation of the immigrants to their native countries.

Harsh Dev said the state government had admitted in the House that there were several thousand Burmese and Bangladeshi immigrants who had been unlawfully settled on the outskirts of Jammu city and Samba by several NGOs and madrasas.

Earlier, thousands of Tibetan Muslim refugees, who were forced to flee China, had been settled by the state government in colonies located at Eidgah, Badamwari and Gulshan Mohalla in Kashmir and Ladakh, he said.

He said the events like the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley, communal and fascist ideology of the separatists and the state government’s silence over the unlawful settlement of foreign nationals was undoubtedly manipulative and dangerous. He called upon intellectual forums, social organisations, nationalist forces, youth and student organisations to unite to launch a mass agitation against the settlement of the foreign nationals in Jammu.

Hitting out at the Centre for its apathy in addressing the issue, he said the BJP leadership was merely issuing press statements for the public and media consumption with their jingoistic claims falling flat. —- PTI