United Nations: The United Nations is set to study reports about Modi government’s attempts of rigging the upcoming elections in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
Responding to a question at the daily news briefing in New York about permitting temporary residents in the Muslim-majority IIOJK to register as voters, Secretary-General’s Deputy Spokesman Farhan Aziz Haq said the matter would “need to be studied”. “But,” he added, “the basic principle that we followed is that for any disputes, it’s important to make sure that all of the communities feel being fairly treated and fairly represented.”
It is to mention here that the chief electoral officer of IIOJK, Hirdesh Kumar, on Wednesday announced that non-locals living ordinarily could register their Names in the voting list.
The new voters would include Indians temporarily residing in the region, mainly Indian military personnel, government and private sector employees, and migrant workers.
It is to mention here that till August 05, 2019, when Narendra Modi-led fascist Indian government unilaterally and unconstitutionally repealed the special status of IIOJK by abrogating the Articles 370 and 35A, voting rights in the territory were restricted to its permanent residents only. The articles prohibited Indian citizens from permanently settling, buying land and holding local government jobs in the territory.
The APHC leaders have said that the move is aimed at disempowerment, dispossession, and marginalization of the indigenous population which been central to the Bharatiya Janata Party government’s settler colonial project in IIOJK. They termed the development as part of the apartheid regime’s sinister plan to reduce the Kashmiris’ centrality in the electoral politics.
They maintained that from abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A to changing Kashmir’s age-old domicile law, from redrawing of the region’s electoral maps to tilting balance of power in favour of a particular party and now granting voting rights to non-state subjects are some of the dangerous moves, the Modi regime has made to change the region’s demography and wipe off Kashmiris’ political, religious and cultural identity. They said that all these actions were not only a brazen violation of the UN resolutions but also a violation of the Indian constitution.
