Ahmed Ali Fayyaz
Jammu: The National Conference (NC) Lok Sabha member Aga Syed Ruhullah’s leadership to a Valley-wide movement of seeking rationalisation in the Union Territory’s Reservation Police for government jobs and scholarships has instantly unified the parties who bitterly contested one another in this year’s Parliamentary and Assembly elections.
This is for the first time after the constitution of the Peoples Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) in 2019 and its disintegration in 2021-23 that leaders of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of Mehbooba Mufti and the North Kashmir MP ‘Engineer’ Rashid’s Awami Ittihad Party (AIP) huddled together outside Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s residence in Srinagar on Monday.
Ruhulla, who has represented the Budgam segment in the erstwhile State’s legislative Assembly for three consecutive terms from 2002 to 2018 and functioned as a Minister in Omar Abdullah’s Cabinet in 2009-14, led a march and peaceful demonstration of students against the government’s Reservation Policy. In response to an aggrieved student’s tweet, Ruhullah had committed on ‘X’ one month back that he would personally join the students in their demonstration if the government failed to grant justice to the General Category (Open Merit) candidates in the next 30 days.
On Sunday, Ruhullah declared on the same social media network that upon his deadline of one month, he would join the students’ demonstration for rationalisation of the Reservation Policy outside Chief Minister’s Gupkar Road residence on Monday. He went on to fulfil his commitment notwithstanding CM’s explanation on ‘X’ that the government had already constituted a Cabinet subcommittee which would shortly submit its report after taking into considerations the reservations and apprehensions of all categories.
There were apparently positive reactions to Omar’s statement but his assertion that the matter was now ‘sub judice’ in the J&K High Court was not taken well by the aggrieved students. Many of them protested and pointed out that no court had stayed a reconsideration or rationalisation or blocked the UT government’s prerogative to undo the injustice done to the OM candidates. Many from the legal fraternity dismissed this particular part of the CM’s statement as an excuse to defer the promised rationalisation of the Reservation Policy.
PDP’s Waheed-ur-Rehman Para, who lost to Ruhullah in this year’s Lok Sabha elections, as also the party president and the former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s daughter, Iltija Mufti, who contested the recent Assembly elections from Bijbehara but lost to NC’s Dr Bashir Ahmad Veeri, were conspicuously present and shoulder to shoulder with the NC MP amid tight security arrangements at the Gupkar Road.
Others who joined the sit-in included Engineer Rashid’s brother and the AIP MLA from Langet, Sheikh Khursheed. Former Srinagar mayor Junaid Azeem Mattu and former deputy mayor Sheikh Imran had also announced to cut short their programme outside J&K and return to Srinagar by the earliest available flights. However, they were not seen in the demonstration. Reasons for their absence were not known.
Almost all the opposition parties, including PDP and AIP, have given unconditional support to Ruhullah’s agitation seeking rationalisation to the Reservation Policy. Interestingly, the participants’ diatribe was against “those who weakened democracy”— euphemistically the BJP which not only granted the Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the Paharis and some other tribal communities but also gave them a dedicated reservation quota of 10 percent in all government jobs and scholarships in Jammu and Kashmir.
On the recommendations of the UT government, which endorsed the recommendations of the Justice (retd.) G.D. Sharma Commission, the Union Government granted ST status to the Pahari and other minuscule tribal communities. Following this change, the UT government in March 2024 reserved 10 percent of government jobs and scholarships for this ST-2 category in addition to a dedicated 10 percent reservation for the ST-1 (Gujjars etcetera).
The aggrieved candidates, after several selections of government recruitments and the recent admissions in MS and MD courses, have been demanding 70 percent reservations for the OM category and only 30 percent for the Reserved categories. They claim that the General category (OM) constituted for 70 percent of the UT’s population but it was getting only 30 percent of the share in jobs. Contrarily, according to them, the Reserved categories, who are claimed to be under 30 percent of the population, are said to be taking 70 percent share.
Even as the BJP fulfilled the Pahari community’s over 35-year-old demand, it lost miserably in 8 of the 9 Assembly segments of the Pahari-dominated Pir Panjal districts of Rajouri and Poonch. In the Lok Sabha elections on Anantnag-Rajouri seat, BJP covertly supported Apni Party candidate Zaffar Iqbal Manhas, who is a Pahari from Kashmir’s Shopian area. He lost to NC’s Gujjar leader Mian Altaf by a massive margin and also lost his security deposit.
