Commission favours the demand of IB residents

Recommends inclusion of Bauria, Jogi as backward communities

Jammu, Aug 13: State Backward Commission held its meeting today, the Aug. 13, 2018 in its office under the Chairmanship of its Chairman Jeet Lal Gupta. Prof. Virender Gupta and Adv. Onkar Seth also attended the meeting as its members. The Commission received representations from the people residing along the International Border of J&K State demanding that they should provided the benefits those are being availed by the families living along the LoC/LAC. Among others who represented the case of people residing along IB and met the Commission were MP Jugal Kishore Sharma, MLAs Dr. Krishan Lal, Kuldeep Kumar, Sham Choudhary, Sukhnandan Kumar, Ex-MLA Ashwani Sharma, Ex-VC Rashpal Verma, Adv. Parimoksh Seth and Ajay Sharma.

It was stated in the representations that the International Border remains frequently disturbed because of cross border firing. They have to vacate their houses and are compelled to take shelter in the safer places, suffer heavy causalities, their houses are damaged, they find difficulty to cultivate their lands and studies of their children gets hampered because of the frequent displacement of families. It was also stated that the people living along IB are put to miserable financial and social conditions.

The Chairman assured that Commission would take cognizance of their issue and make positive recommendations to the government about their demands shortly.

The Commission recommended the case of Yogi/Jogi/Nath and Bouria/Boria/Bowaria Communities for their inclusion in the OBC category in view of their social, educational and economic backwardness, the recommendation of the commission are shortly to be submitted to the state government.

The Jogi/Yogi/Nath community was declared as one of the backward classes by the Mandal Commission and they have population of 40,000 to 50,000 in the state. The people of Boria/Bouria/Bowaria community are working as manual labourer in the vegetable/fruits mandies of the state and put up in extremely poor and hygienic conditions. Both these communities were struggling for their inclusion in the Backward classes since 1996, but due to insensitive attitude and slackness on the part of the authorities, their grievances were not addressed. However, the present state backward commission while looking on the concerned files and documents submitted by these communities realized the genuine of their demand and as such recommended their case for inclusion in the backward classes.

Rashpal Verma also put up the case of OBCs before the commission and made request for enhancement in their quota for reservation in the government jobs and  professional education institution as their population as projected by Govt. of India with the feedback from state government authorities, is about 11%.