The provincial units of NC of Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar Abdullah gave different memoranda to Desai & Co in Srinagar and in Jammu. That seemed truly like the party was adhering to the dictum "Do in Rome as the Romans do’’. In Kashmir, it spoke the language of the Kashmiris, trying to capture the essence of the sentiment prevailing among the masses. In Jammu, its party unit headed by Devender Singh Rana spoke in a language that was more in consonance with the BJP!

The memorandum submitted by the Jammu NC unit said: Any delimitation process has a vital role in empowering each constituent to be equal shareholder in the process of democracy so that each one feels empowered and not feels relegated, isolated, disconnected or disempowered. It further said that it expected the commission to work transparently to delimit constituencies on the basis of basic tenets of Delimitation – population, geography, topography, area, physical features, contiguity, convenience of administrative units and facilities of communication and approachability of public convenience.

If further said: All regions or sub-regions crave for equal role in the governance where no one should nurture a feeling of subservience or discrimination. The memo also said: This Delimitation Commission must give its due to all parts of the Jammu region so that our commitment for the equitable empowerment of all regions and sub regions does not get dented. There are also geographical and topographical challenges in the Jammu region and certain areas are far flung, inaccessible, remote, backward and mountainous.

Talking about the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities, the memorandum said: The Scheduled Tribes of the region must get adequate judicious representation, adding reservation should be based on the settled criterion. One must say all that sounds pretty convincing and to the point too. If only one scratched a little deeper, this would truly look like running with hares and hunting with hounds and a duplicity no less.

Let’s look into the history of reservation for Scheduled Tribes (STs) in J&K and may be things will become clear to us. As long as Article 35-A and 370 were around, that is till August 5, 2019, the STs were not given any political reservations in the then state. Out of 90 legislative assembly seats which the Delimitation Commission headed by Desai will decide on, at least 9 to 10 seats are likely to be reserved for the STs now.

What about reservation in spheres other than political for the STs? From 1947 to 1991, when the state was ruled by NC in several spells, it used Gujjars and Bakerwals as a captive vote bank, but did not deign to give reservations at any level to them. This was the reason why a Gujjar scholar Dr Javed Rahi, said: Gujjars and Bakerwals are not against Article 370. Article 370 is against them. Incidentally, there are more than 10 lakh STs in J&K and they did not shed any tears when Article 35-A was scrapped and they got political reservations as mandated in Articles 330 to 342 of the Indian Constitution.

Giving political reservation in the new legislative assembly is one of the tasks that has been assigned to the Delimitation Commission. Nowhere till date has the NC admitted that it was responsible for denying STs their due so far. It has also not admitted that it is the reason for carving out legislative assembly constituencies inequitably in the two regions of the UT. Circumstances have now forced it to admit tacitly that the people in Jammu region feel Kashmir-centric politics has been their bane. A couple of days ago, Farooq Abdullah said candidly that the aspirations of the people of the two regions are distinctly different from one another.

In other words, Kashmiris and Jammuites are not on the same page when it comes to defining their relationship with the Centre are concerned. Of course, there are sharp, deep rooted differences between the Kashmiris and Jammuites. By the way, what comes to mind when most ordinary Indians think about J&K, separately?

Well, for a beginning, the names of terrorist organisations like Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar e Toiba, Jaish e Mohammad, The Resistance Front etc are too well known as terrorist groups mostly operating in Kashmir. Please read about various Indian Army formations like JAKLI, JAKRIF and Dogra Regiments, to name a few, to just understand the aspirations of Jammu youths. Mostly rooted in the Jammu region and that is not to say that the Indian Air Force, Navy, BSF, CISF and others do not attract the youth of Jammu. (The Earth News — IPA Service)