Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir has got an elected government after six years and it is creating a sense of jubilation among people, however, the Sikhs in the union territory feel disempowered, despite Chief Minister Omar Abdullah having said that the government will represent all the people of the erstwhile state.
Sikhs, whose population is around three lakh persons, are scattered in the Valley and Jammu region, and form an important part of the diversity of the Union Territory.
Even though more than 20 Sikh candidates contested the recent assembly elections, held after a decade, none of them could make it to the Assembly from the valley, however, a BJP candidate from Ranbir Singh Pora constituency, Narinder Singh Raina, was elected as the lone Sikh representative to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly.
However, their expectations remain dashed even with the five legislators who will be nominated by the Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha, as per the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act of 2019, in the 90-member Assembly, raising the legislator number to 95.
The LG has the power to nominate five members to the Legislative Assembly - two women, two from Kashmiri Pandit community and one from POJK refugees. Sikhs say that the Act should clearly have defined that among the five representatives, one should have been from the Sikh community.
Dr Harbaksh Singh, who contested the Assembly elections from the Tral constituency of Pulwama district, said Sikh representation will be impossible in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislature after the abolition of the Legislative Council.
He said the previous governments would nominate Sikhs for the Legislative Council and since it stands abolished in the union territory there are "no chances" now for the community's representation.
"The only possibility for us to get representation is that the Lieutenant Governor must nominate a Sikh leader out of the five representatives he is authorised to nominate," Dr Singh told ETV Bharat.
Dr Singh, who was associated with the Peoples Democratic Party earlier, said that the Sikhs will form a joint socio-political group in Jammu and Kashmir to press the Centre to amend the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act 2019 to keep one Sikh representative in the nomination quote of five.
Paramjeet Singh, District president of Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee Baramulla, said the Sikh population in Jammu and Kashmir will remain disempowered unless they have political representation in the Assembly.
"Our community will make no progress until we have political representation in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly. Though we have 90 elected MLAs, they cannot completely understand the issues we are facing," he told ETV Bharat.
Sikh scholar, Dr Pardeep Singh Bali, who teaches Social Science (Journalism) at Jammu University, said that the Sikh community has no chance to go into the Assembly except to be nominated by the LG.
"Our population is scattered across the UT which will make it difficult for any Sikh candidate to win any election. We had some votes concentrated in Gandhi Nagar constituency of Jammu but that was redrawn by the delimitation commission into R S Pora and Bahu," Bali told ETV Bharat. He claimed that the political parties based out of Kashmir have always discriminated against Sikhs.
"We have no representation in the present National Conference and Congress government. BJP is the only national party which gave a ticket to a sikh candidate Professor Narinder Singh Raina from the R S Pora assembly of Jammu district. He defeated Congress leader Raman Bhalla and won. He is the sole representative of Sikhs across Jammu and Kashmir," Dr Bali told ETV Bharat.
He said that the LG can nominate one woman from the five MLAs he is authorised to nominate. Dr Harbaksh Singh said that though the Sikhs are not against representation or nomination of Kashmir Pandits, PoJK refugees or women, excluding Sikhs will be "injustice and discrimination with us".
Sources said that the Sikh groups in Jammu have submitted a memorandum to the LG for nominating a Sikh legislator to the Assembly. The Sikhs had urged the delimitation commission also to reserve a seat for them when it redrew the electoral map of Jammu and Kashmir in 2022 which created uproar among regional political parties.
The parties including NC, PDP and Peoples Conference then said the Commission created six new seats in the Jammu region (43) and only one seat in the Kashmir valley (47 seats) despite a big population gap in the two regions.
