A Community of Yore!

Tags: Jammu and Kashmir, Vote, Election, Voter ID Cards

The season has once again come for our community to run from pillar to post for the inclusion of our near and dear ones in the electoral roll or correction of our names or for that matter for applying a fresh for our VOTER ID CARD, for which if I remember have been applying for the last two decades or more and this time I have been once again given an opportunity to revise our credentials in the electoral roll which I know will never be done. This is the same repeated story of our community, and we have seen this happening in the last so many seasons.

I recall my experience when we were asked to apply for EPIC cards and were asked to visit different locations to submit our applications; To Date, I am still waiting for my card!

Recently after the abgoration of article 370 in our state we were once again asked to submit our applications for the voter cards in Shiv temple Ban Talab, but that process also did not culminate in any results. We have been following all the advisories of government from time to time but we are unable to get the fair deal best known to the people who are in charge of these processes.

As we were hounded from the valley in the 1990's we all shifted to the plains and remained steadfast mostly in Jammu waiting and looking at the government at that time for our welfare and resettlement!

But we were only shown subj bagh, a Kashmiri proverb, by successive governments and were always asked to submit our credentials fresh for any welfare activity, but always we got nothing and to date are also sailing on the same boat.

As time passed we as a community worked individually to create a space and tried to reestablish ourselves on our own and worked hard for our younger generation members by providing them the necessary education and making them self-sufficient to work in the corporate sector of the present world.

As it is, time has traveled so fast that we missed a lustrous period of our younger days and as we see it now we all are presently at square one and have only seen the further displacement of our community members as our younger generation are now scattered in our vast country and also in other countries of the world. Since displacement, we as a community have dispersed in every nook and Corner of India, and the government talks about providing facilities to Jammu and Delhi kps for filling these forms of inclusion, correction, or deletion, but what about our other community people, who can't take this cumbersome exercise and they all will remain neglected on account of their right to franchise which is a fundamental right of everyone. Not so many of our community members are interested in working on this exercise once again as they already know the fate of this futile exercise.

I want to know how the election department can rope in any Kashmiri Pandit Community Member who resides other than in Jammu, Delhi, and Chandigarh to enroll in this latest revision of the electoral process.