People’s Conference president and Handwara MLA Sajad Gani Lone on Wednesday criticised the reservation system in Jammu and Kashmir, calling it “recruitment apartheid”.
His remarks came after the recently announced appointments to the Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Service (JKAS) and J&K Accounts (Gazetted) cadres, in which only 10 of the 55 selected officers are from the Kashmir Valley.
He alleged that it was a calculated strategy to “disempower and marginalise the inhabitants of the Valley.”
“Kashmir accounts for approximately 56% of the total population of the Union Territory; the Valley has received a mere 18% of the positions, which is clearly a stark, unconscionable and deliberate disparity,” he said.
Lone said this is persecution of the inhabitants of the Kashmir Valley. “It’s a strategy to disempower and marginalise. It’s plain and simple,” he said.
The Union Territory has witnessed continuous protests seeking a rationalisation of the amended job reservation policy introduced by the Lieutenant Governor-led administration in 2024, which had squeezed the general category to below 40% in jobs and admissions, which form the majority of the population.
Lone also raised concerns about the “optics” surrounding the issuance of appointment orders, saying that chief minister Omar Abdullah himself signed and issued the orders. Lone said that given the sensitive and politically charged nature of the recruitment outcome, the chief minister ought to have maintained a distance from the process. “Ideally, he should have kept away,” Lone said.
{{/usCountry}}Lone also raised concerns about the “optics” surrounding the issuance of appointment orders, saying that chief minister Omar Abdullah himself signed and issued the orders. Lone said that given the sensitive and politically charged nature of the recruitment outcome, the chief minister ought to have maintained a distance from the process. “Ideally, he should have kept away,” Lone said.
{{/usCountry}}He was equally critical of what he described as a false sense of hope being offered to the people of Kashmir through a proposal reportedly sent by the elected government to the Centre seeking a revision of the reservation framework.
Lone alleged that the reservation question in Jammu and Kashmir is fundamentally a “Jammu versus Kashmir issue”, rooted in what he characterises as the “ethnic disempowerment” of valley inhabitants.
Lone has announced that he will raise the matter in the assembly and called on representatives across party lines to rally around this issue.
“I wish and hope that we together, across party lines, can highlight the severity of this issue,” he said.