Union Minister of State for Home, Sriprakash Jaiswal, committed a faux pas when he declared that the government had no objection to PoK residents reclaiming properties in Jammu and Kashmir state. It showed, he said, that the democratic process had begun. Within hours of issuing this statement, he clarified that any property claim by PoK residents would be examined by the state government or the external affairs ministry.He was reacting to a press report that a lady passenger from Muzaffarabad, who came on the inaugural bus service to Srinagar, staked a claim to her ancestral property. This created scare among lakhs of refugees who migrated to the Indian side in 1947 and were not given any compensation for properties left behind. Those who were settled on evacuee property feared that they would be evicted and become homeless.It speaks volumes of apathy and inefficiency of successive governments in the state, and the Centre, that they have yet not evolved a policy for the refugees who had to migrate to the Indian side of the LoC in 1947 and are still called refugees. For from attending to their basic and human rights, their anxieties have been aggravated by the controversy over revival of the Resettlement Act of 1982. The deputy chief minister and senior-most leader of the state Congress, Mangat Ram Sharma, has demanded the scrapping of the act as “it would open flood gates of complaints once the rush of passengers by the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service picked up”. Why didn’t he and union MoS, home, consult each other before going public on the subject? When the bill was passed by the legislative assembly in 1982, the Congress party, then in opposition, had launched a vigorous attack on it and swept all Hindu majority seats in the election of 1983 as a consequence. The ruling National Conference similarly mobilised the Muslim voters in its favour.Fearing the consequences if the bill became a law, then Governor B.K. Nehru sent it the President of India who, in turn, referred it to the Supreme Court for legal advice. The apex court “respectfully returned” the reference without any comment in 2001. The delay of 19 years waiting in vain for the judicial verdict, although inexplicable, would have served a purpose if this period was used to evolve a consensus over the issue. At a time when people were getting ready to celebrate the impending reunion with people of the same ethnic stock from across the LoC and when a major breakthrough had taken place in the peace process between India and Pakistan, it is singularly unfortunate that atmosphere threatens to be vitiated by this controversy.Both the sides, for and against the Act, suffer from ignorance. It seeks to resettle persons who were state subjects before May 5, 1954 and who had migrated after March 1, 1947, to the territory now included in Pakistan after verifying their antecedents. Even a cursory reading of the Act makes it clear that it applies to Pakistan and not Pak administered Kashmir. For India claims that the latter is legally a part of the state and its citizens are state subjects. Their movement across LoC was governed by the Ingress and Egress Act and now by special permits. When the bill was passed, the then CM had accepted my suggestion to pass a supplementary legislation to implement his verbal assurance that the interests of Hindu and Sikh allottees of evacuee property would not be affected. If it is done now, much of the anxieties of the refugees would be allayed. It needs to be clarified that most of the evacuee property belonged to those who migrated to Pakistan and not the Pakistan Administered Kashmir.As far verification of antecedents of persons claiming resettlement benefits, which is an essential condition for entertaining claims, it is beyond the capacity of the state government. It is the job of India’s intelligence agencies or the high commission. If it is proved that the claimants had acquired Pakistani nationality, which every migrant is supposed to have done by now, s/he would cease to be the state subject and hence forfeit the right to claim any property.According to Entry 17 in the Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution, citizenship is a union subject. Article 11 makes power of Parliament to enact laws on citizenship on this subject absolute. Thus the state government has no power to restore Indian citizenship to migrants from the state to Pakistan, without which they cannot be granted state subject. There is a categorical guarantee to safeguard the interests of refugees allotted on evacuee property in a judgment of the Supreme Court. It directed the state government “not to entertain any more claim for properties left behind by those who migrated to Pakistan as the 12 year limitation period prescribed in the Evacuees (Administration of Property) Act, 1949 was long over”.Thus the Resettlement Act serves no purpose. It does not help the evacuee to reclaim their property nor does it threaten the interests of allottees on that property. It can merely be a source of tension between the communities. Why is it then retained? Some clarifications are immediately called for to remove exaggerated fears and perhaps exaggerated expectations about the act.
