Srinagar: The announcement of domicile rules for the newly created Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has the Jammu unit of the BJP worried and upset, The Hindu reported.
According to the report the local unit flagged these concerns with the party’s national leadership and also with Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
“According to what we gathered from the notification, only Group D jobs will be reserved for locals, while others are open for all. We have been told that the provincial services board will take care of some levels of hiring keeping locals in mind, but that is just oral assurance, the notification itself does not reassure us, a senior leader in Jammu BJP said .
“The domicile rule means that all the higher level jobs are out of the purview of reservation for domiciles, also the 15-year threshold for claiming domicile means that anyone who comes in to work in J&K and stays on for 15 years, their children, if they stay here, will be considered for domicile,” said a source. No cut off date for calculating this 15- year period has, as yet, been notified.
“We are facing a popular backlash from our people on this issue and it will harm us as and when polls take place,” said a local leader who did not want to come on record.
Speaking to The Hindu, BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, who has been handling Jammu and Kashmir for the party for a long time, said that there were issues that the Jammu unit of the party had flagged, and that “their fears are valid.”
He also confirmed that Amit Shah had been also been apprised of the concerns of the people of Jammu and he had assured that he would look into it.
“There are some issues with regard to the domicile notification that have been flagged, especially with regards to reserving jobs for locals, and to an extent these fears are valid,” said Mr. Madhav.
