Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir): The resignation of Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani has sparked a row and brought back the issue of alleged admission of Kashmiri students in Pakistan Medical colleges.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has claimed that separatists in Kashmir have written letters of recommendation for sending students to Pakistan, which have been confiscated during the investigation. The NIA also alleged that these people used to create unfavourable conditions in the valley after getting funds in lieu of the admissions.
On June 29, senior separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani resigned from the Hurriyat Conference as its life-time chairman and brought the spotlight on the alleged sale of medical seats in Pakistan. In his resignation letter, the senior leader accused its Muzaffarabad counterpart of Hurriyat chapter of financial irregularities and open rebellion. He also alleged that some separatists from Kashmir have turned the seat allocation to Kashmiri students in Pakistan into a business.
In 2017, the NIA raided the houses and offices of several separatists leaders for their alleged roles in Hawala money transactions and subsequently arrested these leaders.
NIA also confiscated several letters of recommendation from their homes. The NIA claimed that the separatists would send 100 students to Pakistan every year for Medical and other professional courses and would sell them these degrees for the hefty amount and that money would be later used for funding the separatist's politics in the valley.
Also read: Senior Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani resigns from All Parties Hurriyat Conference
Some years back the government of Pakistan rolled out the red carpet for Kashmiri students wanting to study medicine and engineering. Students who could not get admission locally would head to Pakistan, where seats were reserved for them in colleges in PoK, Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore. Most seats were fully sponsored by the Pakistan government, which used the Hurriyat, on both sides, to decide the allocation of these seats as the recommendation letters from the leaders of the separatist parties were required for the admission.
The students, whose parents or close relatives have been killed by the security forces in Kashmir or have suffered at the hands of Indian forces, are given preference for the admission.
The separatists, however, are accused of giving the most of the seats to their relatives' children.
The growing number of these students was estimated this year when hundreds of students from Pakistan arrived in Amritsar from the Wagah border where they were quarantined.
In 2017, the NIA arrested top separatist leaders in Kashmir and accused them of spreading unrest in the Valley in exchange for hawala money.
The leader has been lodged in Delhi's Tihar Jail for the past three years.
Gilani's resignation and related issues have become the subject of a sensitive debate.
Also read: Geelani and the separatist politics in Kashmir
Ninety-one-year-old Gilani has been under house arrest for the past ten years and his health is also deteriorating. His family is not allowing anyone to talk to him and he is said to have lost his memory.
Syed Ali Shah Geelani hails from north Kashmir's Sopore town and is a three-time MLA from the same region 1972, 1977 and 1987. He, however, gave up electoral politics when armed insurgency erupted in Kashmir.
In 1993, Geelani became one of the founding members of All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), along with Gani Lone, Gani Bhat and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.
