Pak refugees in J&K buoyant as they get set for first vote: ‘We will celebrate, dance’

“A police party from R S Pura town came. After going through the voter list, it asked us to leave the queue as a word ‘NPR’ (non permanent resident) was mentioned against our names in the list,’’ he says.

The members of Billa’s clan were registered as NPRs in the voter list as they had migrated during the 1947 Partition from Sialkot (now in Pakistan) to the adjoining R S Pura town which was part of the then Indian princely state of J&K. During the 1947 clashes, they chose migration for the sake of their safety, he notes.

Billa Ji of Purana Pind working in his fields on Sunday. (Express Photo)

Like Billa’s family members, 63-year-old Om Parkash’s grandfather Kirpa Ram along with his wife and children also migrated during the Partition to Keeriyan Gandiyal village in Kathua district from Pindi Chatrana village in West Pakistan. “Though their native village formed part of undivided Punjab’s Shakargarh tehsil, they came to Keeriyan Gandiyal as it was nearby and they used to visit here to work as agriculture labourers earlier too,’’ Parkash says.

After shifting to the Kathua village, the Kirpa Ram family started working in the fields of local landlords, who were settled in Jammu, besides cultivating the lands allotted to the families displaced from Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) by the then J&K government.

The PoK families, however, left the area following a flood in 1955 and were allotted lands somewhere else, Parkash says. The West Pakistan Refugees (WPRs) then continued to cultivate these lands and also got khasra girdawaris (details on land possession and crops) registered in their names, he says.

The then J&K government granted proprietary right of the agricultural land to its tillers by enacting the J&K Agrarian Reforms Act 1976, but the WPRs could not get the benefits of this scheme since NPRs were not eligible to own land in J&K, he says.

The number of permanent residents living in Keeriyan Gandiyal then used to be lesser than the WPR families, which numbered about 400, Parkash recounts. “A polling station however used to be set up in the village only for the PRs (permanent residents) during the Assembly polls. And it always hurt us when we used to watch them participate in voting which was out of bounds for us,’’ he says. “My two generation of ancestors, grandparents and parents, passed away in the hope of seeing a day they will also allowed to exercise their franchise for the formation of the J&K government.”

During the third and final phase of the J&K polls on October 1, 16 constituencies from the Valley and 24 seats from the Jammu region – involving Udhampur, Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts – are slated for voting. “This is going to be a big day for us as it will be the first time when we vote in the J&K Assembly elections,’’ Parkash says, adding that they plan to celebrate the occasion as a festival.

While Billa passed class 12 exam in 1982-82, Parkash passed his class 10 exam in 1978. Both say they got calls for jobs afterwards, but could not get the appointment letters as they did not have a “state subject certificate”, which was issued by the J&K revenue officials only to the PRs.

Until August 2019, when the BJP-led Centre abrogated Articles 370, which gave special status to J&K, there were two sets of electors in the J&K voter lists – PRs, who were eligible to vote in both the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, and the NPRs, who were allowed to vote only in the Lok Sabha elections but not in the Assembly and local body polls despite being recognised as the citizens of India.

The WPRs got the domicile status and became natives of J&K only in the wake of the scrapping of Article 370.

Settled mainly in the districts of Jammu, Samba and Kathua in the Jammu region along the international border with Pakistan, the WPR families, as per the official records, numbered 5,764 when they migrated in 1947. Their number has now swelled to over 22,170 families, that account for about 1.5-2 lakh voters, says Labha Ram Gandhi, president of the West Pakistan Refugees Action Committee. “We have planned to visit polling stations in groups, dancing on drumbeats,’’ he says.

The elections to the Constituent Assembly of J&K were held in 1951, while its first Legislative Assembly polls took place in 1957.

Gandhi says the Centre also started a scheme to give Rs 5.5 lakh each to all the 5,764 WPR families. While this cash assistance has been disbursed to many of them, the remaining ones would get it after the Assembly polls, he says.

In July this year, the J&K administration decided to grant the proprietary rights of state land which were allotted to the WPR families at the time of their settlement following their migration in 1947.