Jammu shuts down over bill to ban inter-district recruitment

JAMMU - All shops and business establishments were closed and traffic was off the roads as daylong shutdown called by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against a bill seeking to ban inter-district recruitment in Jammu and Kashmir began here Friday.

The bill, which is scheduled to be debated in both the houses of the state legislature Friday, has generated anger in Jammu region as it denies Scheduled Caste candidates jobs reserved for them at the district level.

While valley-based parties, the National Conference (NC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, favour the ban on inter-district recruitment, Jammu-based parties like the BJP and Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party are opposed to it.

Congress, which is a constituent of the ruling alliance in the state, is divided as its Jammu-based legislators are opposed to the ban while those from the valley support it.

Protesters set up road blockades by burning tyres and held noisy demonstrations at several places.

The police, however, cleared one of the main bridges over river Tawi that connects Jammu city with the rest of the country.

Both the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley and Hindu-dominated Jammu region have their own reasons for supporting and opposing the bill that bars applicants from seeking jobs in districts other than their native ones.

While the valley feels that inter-district recruitment limits Kashmiri youths’ employment opportunities as jobs are reserved for the Scheduled Caste community, the Jammu region feels that the bill seeking to ban such recruitment overturns the constitutional provision of reservation of jobs for the socially marginalized people.

If enforced, it would deprive the Scheduled Caste community, which constitutes about 20 percent of the five million population in the region, of the district cadre posts in Kashmir Valley. The state has a population of over 10 million. The community has no presence in the valley where Muslims are in an overwhelming majority, with less than 3,500 Kashmiri Hindus as a microscopic minority.

“The scales of natural justice demand that our people should get at least the jobs in their own districts,” NC legislator Chaudhary Mohammad Ramzan told IANS.

But the BJP, which was the biggest beneficiary in the assembly elections in December 2008 when it won an all-time high 11 seats owing to the regional sentiments on the Amarnath land row, is opposing it.

“It’s subversion of constitution,” said BJP legislature Chaman Lal Gupta.

“We will not allow the fragmentation of the state on regional grounds,” he told reporters here.