NEW DELHI, 1 May 2005 — The Supreme Court will hear tomorrow a plea against accepting petitions from residents of Pakistani Kashmir for restoring their properties in the Indian-administered portion of the state.
A bench of Chief Justice R.C. Lahoti and Judge G.P. Mathur posted the petition, filed by the Panthers Party, for hearing tomorrow after party chief and Jammu and Kashmir legislator Bhim Singh mentioned it.
According to the petition, applications for restoration of property to the owners who had fled the country had started coming in since the start of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service on April 7.
The party said the petition was being filed to avoid communal tension and destablization of Jammu and Kashmir following the state government’s move to allow such claims under the guise of it being a confidence building measures to restore normalcy between the two countries.
The petitioner said that visitors from Pakistani Kashmir, who had been allowed to visit and stay in Jammu and Kashmir, were allowed to file applications for the restoration of property under the provisions of the Jammu and Kashmir State Evacuees (Administration of Property) Act.
If such visitors were allotted evacuee property, the residents of the state would not only be deprived of their rights to property, including agricultural land, but it would further create communal tension and genuine apprehension in the minds of the state’s residents. This would lead to further terrorism and militancy and destabilize the state, the petition said.
It said all the 14 passengers from Muzaffarabad, who arrived by the first bus on April 7, had returned. But of the 30 visitors who arrived on the second bus on April 21, only 12 returned and the whereabouts of the remaining 18 passengers were not known.
