Srinagar: Apni Party President Altaf Bukhari Monday said that efforts that aim at holistic development and job creation in J&K were welcome but not at the cost of domicile laws that safeguard land and employment rights of its permanent residents.
A statement of Apni Party issued here said that reacting to the Jammu and Kashmir Real Estate Summit 2021 that was organised by the Union Ministry for Housing and Urban Affairs and the J&K administration in Jammu, Bukhari said that Apni Party would never allow any such move that undermines the rights of the People of J&K.
“Our party will always welcome any efforts that will foster progress and prosperity in Jammu and Kashmir. But at the same time, we are pledged to resist any plans that will do away with the exclusive rights of the people on their land and jobs,” he said.
Taking a strong exception to the controversial agenda of the Jammu summit in which the term ‘permanent resident of the State’ has been omitted from the J&K Development Act, Bukhari said that the exclusion of this legal guarantee was unacceptable to the people of J&K.
“Apni Party wants to make it crystal clear that we will always resist any such proceedings that are against the Domicile Law in J&K,” he said, adding that J&K was in dire need of infrastructural development but the same should revolve around its peoples’ identity, demography and their special rights under the law.
Bukhari said that the Jammu summit seems to be a follow-up to the recent attempts that were aimed at change in land use laws allowing re-classifying of agricultural land.
“We want to caution the J&K government to desist from fiddling with the character and demography of J&K,” he said.
Bukhari said that though the development in J&K was of utmost importance primarily for job creation, the government of J&K should ensure that the people of this land were not used merely as a labour class to move the wheels of the country’s private sector.