RBA certificates issue taken up in Legislative Council

The government was today directed by the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Council to look into the matter of issuance of Reserved Backward Areas (RBA) certificates to women who get married and move to the state's backward areas.
The issuance of certificates under the Jammu and Kashmir Reservation Act in favour of RBA and Line of Control (LoC) candidates was a matter of serious nature, LC chairman Amrit Malhotra said while directing the government on the issue so that genuine beneficiaries are not deprived of their rights.
Earlier, Minister of State for Power and Information Vikar Rasool had replied to a Calling Attention Notice by National Conference legislator Dr Shehnaz Ganai. He said that under the rules, a person claiming benefit for being resident of a backward area or near the Line of Actual Control must establish that he or she has lived there for a period not less than 15 years before the date of application and is actually residing in the said area.

His reply was contested by Ganai who said on the one side urban to rural marriages were being promoted and on the other, women being married in such areas were deprived of the benefits under the backward area.
This will not only discourage people from marrying their daughters to boys from backward areas, but was also discriminatory, she said.
Congress MLC Ravinder Kumar Sharma asked if a man from the backward area was not deprived of the benefits if he married and moved to an urban area, why were the women being treated differently.
Ganai requested the Chair to intervene and pass a direction in this regard to the government, following which Malhotra told Rasool to look into the issue as it was a humanitarian one.