Displaced people from PoJK get domicile certificates with ‘original place of residence’

Jammu, Jun 15 (PTI) “We have been reconnected to our roots”, says Anil Mahajan, who is among the over 21,000 displaced people from Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) given a new domicile certificate mentioning the place they originally belonged to.

The certificate carries the name of the “original place of residence” in PoJK from where their family members had migrated during the Partition in 1947, said officials in the Jammu and Kashmir administration that is issuing the document.

“We have been reconnected to our roots. It is very emotional,” said Mahajan, whose domicile certificate mentions the Mirpur area in PoJK as his original place of residence. “Everybody in my family has got one. They took our details and provided us with the domicile certificates. It is really very encouraging”, he told PTI over phone from Chandigarh where he currently lives.

The certificate, the officials said, is exclusively for those who were displaced from areas of Jammu and Kashmir that are under the illegal occupation of Pakistan. In 1947, they migrated to different parts of India, including Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

“It is an emotional moment for the people belonging to PoJK that they have got a domicile certificate issued by the Jammu and Kashmir administration with the place of origin in PoJK written as residential places,” SoS International chairperson Rajiv Chunni told PTI here.

Several displaced people belonging to PoJK have got these certificates with the place of domicile mentioned as their post-migration residential address, he said.

Mahajan, who owns an IT firm in Delhi and got the certificate recently, said it gives a “feeling of belongingness”.

Jaipur-resident Ashwani Kumar’s certificate mentions his original place of residence as Siyak in PoJK and all 12 members of his family have received the document.

“We are very happy to get this domicile certificate from the Jammu and Kashmir administration with our place of place of origin written as place of domicile in it. This is the first thing we have got in the past over 75 years from Jammu and Kashmir authorities,” Kumar, who heads an organisation ‘Kashmiri Welfare Society’ for displaced people of PoJK in Rajasthan, said.

Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha had said that over 21,000 domicile certificates have been issued through camps in Delhi, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand.

According to officials in the Relief Commissioner’s Office-Jammu, 1.58 domicile certificates have been issued both to Kashmiri migrants and displaced people of PoJK. Over 5,000 families of displaced people of PoJK living in various parts of India have been registered as displaced persons with the relief commissioner’s office in Jammu, they said.

Kashmiri migrants are those who left the Valley during the height of terrorism in the 1990s

Kumar said that “as many as 165 families here (Rajasthan) have got domicile certificates of Jammu and Kashmir. We urge the government to provide us relief on the pattern of displaced Kashmiri migrants. We have been given nothing”.