71 yrs on, West Pak refugees remain without basic rights

Dinesh Manhotra

Tribune News Service

Swankhamore (Samba), Aug 13

The country will celebrate its 72nd Independence Day on Wednesday but the third generation of nearly 1.5 lakh refugees, most of whom are Dalits, are still struggling to get themselves ‘liberated from the yoke of slavery’.

For these refugees, freedom from the British rule was a ‘farce’ as they have been protesting since 1947 to get basic rights.

Called West Pakistan refugees in official records, these displaced people from Pakistan Punjab are being treated as “unwanted” and have been “wronged” by the successive state governments which have made no serious efforts to solve their humanitarian issues.

“For us, independence is nothing but a farce because our third generation is struggling to get basic human rights in J&K,” said Labha Ram Gandhi, chairman, West Pakistani Refugees Action Committee.

Gandhi is preparing data of the refugee families living in various camps as the Central government has announced to sanction ex gratia of Rs 5 lakh to each family.

“The monetary relief is not going to solve our humanitarian issue. Our main demand is the citizenship right and we are agitating for it since 1947,” Gandhi said. He said the refugees from West Pakistan, settled in other parts of the country, were enjoying all rights and privileges.

According to official statistics, as many as 19,960 families of the West Pakistan refugees are living in 137 hamlets, most of them along the Indo-Pak border in the Jammu province, especially in Kathua, Samba and Jammu districts.

Many refugees live in mud houses which have no water and power supply.

Before the formation of the PDP-BJP government, the refugees were given ‘Domicile Certificate’ which made them eligible for jobs in the Central government.

The BJP had promised to grant them citizenship as a one-time measure. Instead of granting citizenship to the refugees, the BJP even abolished the ‘Domicile Certificate’. The party had later promised to grant identity certificates to the refugees but due to the pressure from separatist groups, the proposal was abandoned.

On August 17, 2016, the then Deputy Commissioner, Jammu, had issued an order directing all tehsildars of Jammu district to issue identify certificates to the West Pakistan refugees in the state so that their children could get jobs in the Armed Forces but the process was stalled.