MUZAFFARABAD: Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas has termed the delimitation commission report to redraw electoral map of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK)as the fascist Indian government’s another move to further marginalize the majority Muslim population of the occupied territory.

He urged the international community in general and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in particular to take immediate stock of the BJP led Indian government’s neofascism that he said was aimed at giving a ‘legal cover’ to its anti-UNSC resolutions move of August 5, 2019 through installation of a Hindu chief minister in the Muslim majority region.

“If the international community had any doubt about India’s ill intentions in the past, this report has let the cat out of the bag. This has completely exposed India’s anti-Kashmiri and anti-Muslim mindset,” said the AJK premier in a brief conversation with a group of journalists before leaving for Islamabad.

Mr Ilyas pointed out that India had long been planning to deprive the majority Muslim population of occupied Jammu and Kashmir of their right to rule their motherland.

First, it stripped the disputed region of its special status, then it embarked on demographic engineering to shift the balance of population and now it has redrawn the electoral map togive greater representation to the Hindu areas ahead of planned elections, he said.

“The state of Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognised disputed region. India’s vicious actionsmoves to furtherdisenfranchiseand disempowertheregion’sMuslim majority populationamount to naked violation of all international laws and conventions in general and the UNSC resolutions in particular,” he said.

“This devilish move warrants immediate intervention on the part of the UN which had pledged the Kashmiris their right to decide their future on their own free accord,” he said.

Separately, he also took to Twitter to express his rejection and condemnation of India’s latest move.

“The announcement by the Delimitation Commission in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir to give Jammu six seats in the Assembly and only one seat to the Valley is a part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to form [the] BJP government in Occupied Kashmir which will never be accepted by the Kashmiri people. No weakness will be shown on the unity and identity of the state of Jammu and Kashmir and the right of self-determination for the Kashmiris. We reject the report,” he wrote in two parts.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2022