The Hindu : National : Erstwhile State subjects need not fear, says Mufti

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Sunday, Apr 24, 2005

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Erstwhile State subjects need not fear, says Mufti

Luv Puri

``Nobody can be dispossessed of his allotted property''

JAMMU: The Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, has dispelled apprehensions of the State's erstwhile subjects, who migrated to Pakistan several decades ago, whether they could reclaim their property left behind in the State. He asserted that nobody would be dispossessed of his allotted property.

This assertion from the head of the State gives a new direction to the debate, which was started in the local press last week after a Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) resident, who had come to this part of the State on the inaugural Srinagar-Muzaffarabad on April 7, reclaimed her parental property. Incidentally, in another case, the Government had rejected the plea of a family, which had taken up Pakistan citizenship and returned back to the State to reclaim their land.

"Disinformation campaign"

Speaking at a function here and later in a press release, the Mufti said: "This is propaganda and a disinformation campaign by vested interests and people should not pay heed to it. As long as our coalition is at the helm of affairs, nothing of the sort would happen."

The debate, which has surfaced from time to time in the State's political history, has often taken interesting turns. Since 1947-48, several political parties had tried to make mileage out of the issue by provoking passions both for and against the rights of the State's migrants, who crossed over to Pakistan to claim back their property.

But in actual practice experts say such demands have no real meaning as it was simply impossible for the former State subjects and present-day Pakistan residents to reclaim their properties due to inherent provisions both in the State as well as the Constitution. At present most of the property left by the people, who went across the border, is in possession of the people who had migrated from PoK.

Even the people who migrated from PoK during 1947 and settled down here have been demanding the right to reclaim their properties left by them in PoK — a demand which many say has little practical importance in contemporary times.

The issue of former State subjects and present-day Pakistan residents reclaiming their lands is not that easy as the State law draws its constitutional sanction from Section 6 of Article 7 of the Constitution.

It authorises the State Assembly to enact a law to grant Indian citizenship to permanent residents of the State, who, after migration to Pakistan, return under a permit issued by the State authority. But this authority is not absolute.

According to entry 17 in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, citizenship is a Union subject.

Article 11 makes the power of Parliament to enact laws on citizenship on this subject absolute. Parliament passed the Citizenship Act in 1955, which is equally applicable to Jammu and Kashmir.

The Act does not make any separate provision for those persons who went to Pakistan in 1947.

As residents of the State became citizens of Pakistan, they ceased to be citizens of India and could be granted citizenship by the Central Government alone.

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