Kashmir bars district jobs to outsiders, PDP calls bill illegal

JAMMU - The main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Friday termed as “unconstitutional” the passage of the inter-district recruitment bill in the state legislative assembly and charged the ruling National Conference of working in an autocratic manner.

“The bill was not even put to voice vote for we don’t know who said yes or no,” PDP president Mehbooba Mufti told reporters here Friday after Speaker Mohammad Akbar Lone adjourned the house following the passage of the bill by voice vote.

The bill that bars applicants from seeking jobs in districts other than their own was passed after a last-minute amendment provided for eight percent job reservations for the Scheduled Castes.

The PDP was opposed to the amendment and wanted a blanket ban on inter-district recruitment with no reservation for any category.

Soon after the speaker pronounced the bill passed, opposition members rushed to the well of the house and created a ruckus by uprooting the mikes and throwing chairs around.

“We are shocked by the way the speaker conducted himself and declared that the bill passed without any discussion,” Mufti said.

Senior PDP leader and former law minister Muzaffar Hussain Beigh said: “No bill can be put to vote when the house is not in order. Many members were on their feet and in these circumstances no bill can be put to vote.”

“That’s what the constitution and law says,” Beigh said.

He said this was a case of “injustice” to the people.

“The Scheduled Castes will have eight per cent reservation in a district where the Scheduled Castes population is 50 per cent and also the same reservation where there is no population of the Scheduled Castes community.”

The Scheduled Castes constitute about 20 percent of the five million population in Jammu. 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 forming a microscopic minority.

Both the Muslim-dominated Kashmir Valley and Hindu-dominated Jammu region have their own reasons for supporting and opposing the bill.

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