Jammu:
Some members of the all-party peace delegation to Jammu and Kashmir, which arrived in Srinagar on Monday to talk to various players in the Valley, visited Tangmarg in Kashmir today. The delegation, including Home Minister P Chidambaram, met with people form the area, which saw some of the worst violence recently.
The delegation was scheduled to visit two hospitals where victims of the violence are recovering. But it could only visit one as there were reports of protests outside the second hospital.
The delegation has now reached Jammu.
On Monday in Srinagar, the most significant development of the all-party meet was the delegates' decision to reach out to key separatists and go and meet them at their homes. After three months of violence which has claimed 100 lives, this was a sign that a stalemate may finally be broken.
(Read - Kashmir: All-party delegates reach out to separatists)The Valley's three main separatists - Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik - had all said a 'No' to the formal invite from the delegation, but the delegation chose not to stand on pride. Instead, they reached out to the separatists with a smaller group dropping in at the homes of all three men.
In Jammu, the delegation will meet with political groups and people from different walks of life.
The refugees living in the area want the delegation to seriously take into account their aspirations. They have been demanding citizenship rights - a long pending demand that will ultimately pave way for getting jobs, owning properties and even taking part in the state elections.
Laba Ram unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls in 2009 - the first ever refugee to do so. But he cannot vote or contest in state Assembly elections.
As a refugee from Pakistan, he can't get what is called a State Subject Certificate. But as his family has been living here since Independence, he is a citizen of the country.
"Refugees are facing injustice for the last 60 years. Something is always said in favour of Kashmir, but people of Jammu should get justice as well," says Laba Ram, president of the West Pakistani Refugee Association.
For 80-year-old Vichater too, the delegation's visit to Jammu is meaningless. He can't buy land for constructing his house. The curse is passed down generations. Anuj, studying in class 12, can't take the state medical entrance examination.
About one lakh refugees, families of those who migrated from Pakistan to Jammu after Partition, can't buy property or get jobs in the state. No government has ever looked at their troubles.
The grant of state rights to the refugees has been a key issue in the elections but has been struck down twice in the Assembly, something which has made the refugees highly skeptical
West Pakistani refugees form a sizeable section of the population. All they are demanding is that their aspirations should also to be taken into account while devising an overall strategy for finding possible solutions to the vexed Kashmir problem.