NPP seeks PM's intervention in enactment of domicile law for J-K

The National Panthers Party (NPP) on Sunday sought the intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the enactment of a domicile law for Jammu and Kashmir to protect the interests of poor farmers and landowners, besides educated unemployed youth.

The demand was made in a memorandum addressed to the prime minister and submitted by NPP chairman and former minister Harsh Dev Singh at his Lok Kalyan Marg residence in Delhi, a party release said here.

"A domicile law needs to be enacted so that outsiders could be barred from participating in selections for government jobs and from buying lands and other properties of poor through distress sales," the NPP said in the memorandum.

The NPP hailed the "bold initiative" of the Centre in scrapping provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution that gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir but said there are "genuine concerns and apprehensions of the people which have become a hot topic of discussion amongst literary and intellectual circles, besides civil society".

"While the revocation of the pernicious separatist clause in the Constitution is being widely appreciated, the civil society and educated youth have bona fide apprehensions which needs to be addressed in the larger interests of the general masses," it said.

It said the erstwhile Dogra ruler Maharaja Hari Singh had enacted state subject laws in Jammu and Kashmir so as to give protection to poor farmers of the state from being robbed of their lands by powerful land mafia and rich non-state subjects.