SRINAGAR – Hurriyat leaders and Kashmiris slammed BJP led government forputting IIOJK up for sale as a real estate summit was organized toencourage outsiders to buy land in the ‘caged valley’.
Oppressed residents termed the Modi government’s move as a land grab todilute the Muslim-majority character of the region, whose partial autonomywas scrapped in an illegal move in August 2019.
The Hindu nationalist government has also enacted a series of new laws andchanged the existing one which allows non-Kashmiri residents to buy land inoccupied Kashmir.
Recently, BJP and state administration held a real estate summit in theregion to accelerate investment. Around 39 MoUs were signed at the RealEstate Summit 2021, in which around half of the agreements were related tothe residential sector, eight were for commercial projects and four werefor hospitality.
Despite all the measures by incumbent authorities, land sales in the regionare not picking up the pace. India’s minister of state for home affairsrevealed that only seven plots of land have been purchased in the region bynon-residents since laws were amended.
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Former CM and active Kashmiri leader Mehbooba Mufti has termed the realestate summit as ‘brazen loot’ aimed at annihilating the identity ofKashmir.
“J&Ks special status was illegally revoked to dehumanise, dispossess &disempower the only Muslim majority state in India. GOIs brazen loot andsale of our resources shows that the sole motive is to annihilate ouridentity and change the demography,” she wrote in a recent tweet.
Omar Abdullah also lambasted authorities saying ‘once again the trueintentions of the government are brought to the fore. While offering tosecure the land, jobs, domicile laws and identity of the people of Ladakh,J&K is being put up for sale. People of Jammu should beware, ‘investors’will buy up land in Jammu long before Kashmir.
