By IANS,
Jammu : Two Jammu and Kashmir legislators were marshalled out of the state assembly Wednesday after they insisted on raising an issue in defiance of the speaker, days after a similar incident in the upper house of parliament.
Abdul Haq Khan of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and independent MLA Engineer Abdul Rashid said inter-district recruitments were against people from backward areas. The speaker said the issue could not be raised during question hour, but the duo persisted.
“I cannot allow question hour to be disrupted like this. So the MLAs were ordered to be marshalled out for the smooth conduct of question hour,” assembly Speaker Mohammad Akbar Lone told mediapersons. On March 9, several opposition MPs were marshalled out of the Rajya Sabha for unruly behaviour preceding the debate on the women’s reservation bill.
Khan said the issue “is of importance as it affects the people of farflung backward areas. The inter-district recruitments eat up the posts that otherwise should be going to locals of the respective district”. He said aggrieved people from backward areas were on verge of committing suicide.
Rasheed and Khan asked the government to table a long pending bill, which seeks an amendment in the matter. “It is affecting the career of the youth in the backward and mountainous districts. Without jobs, the youth will be forced to join militancy,” one of them said.
Inter-district recruitments were started by the Congress-led coalition government headed by Ghulam Nabi Azad in 2006.
Eleven legislators of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also walked out, protesting a baton charge on refugees who had migrated to the state from Pakistan during partition and the India-Pakistan wars and who are now demanding citizenship rights.
There are over 300,000 such refugees who had migrated to the Jammu region. These people still do not have citizenship rights in Jammu and Kashmir – they cannot own property, cannot vote in assembly elections, cannot get government jobs and also cannot get admission in professional colleges.