MUZAFFARABAD: Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) LifeSkills Development Foundation (LSDF) working for public awareness in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, has issued a detailed report on the protest movement of public action committees, public demands and measures taken by the government in the last one year.
According to the report, reckless behaviour of the coalition government was major reason behind non-payment of electricity bills by a large number of people in Azad Kashmir. During the boycott campaign of electricity bills, in all major cities including Muzaffarabad, Rawalkot, Mirpur, Kotli, thousands of people took out processions including wheel jams, shutter down strikes, hundreds of people were arrested.
Over 8 months have passed since the ongoing public sit-ins in many cities. The government before joint public action committee, held dialogues after prolonged delay and then negotiated frivolously. There was no concrete practical progress made to solve important demands, including subsidizing flour at par with Gilgit-Baltistan, providing electricity according to local production costs, reducing the privileges of the ruling class and bureaucrats, and giving powers to local representatives.
It was feared that strong protest demonstrations and rallies from platform of Public Action Committees and public march of legislative assembly in the capital and protest demonstrations on May 11, would worsen the situation further.
As per LSDF report, the series of public protests in Azad Jammu and Kashmir has been going on ever since the Neelum River was diverted from Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Kashmir, to the Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Project. However, during the current coalition government, last year organized public protest movements were conducted in an unprecedented manner, by public action committees at the city, district, regional and central levels.
A Central Joint People’s Action Committee was formed, with representatives from all districts, empowered to conduct the movement, including negotiations with the government. The report said that this public protest movement was also unique in Azad Kashmir because for the past 76 years, no public movement of this type could be started by claiming the resources of Azad Kashmir and the right of ownership over them, in which the entire Azad Kashmir was organized at the public level.
Meanwhile, during the reign of former Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider Khan, through the thirteenth amendment to the interim constitution of Azad Kashmir, the right of ownership of the resources of Azad Kashmiris was legally recognized for the first time.
On September 22, 2018, Justice (Retd) Manzoor Hussain Gilani and others filed a writ petition filed in Azad Kashmir High Court on behalf of the Government of Pakistan and others in which Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Project and Kohala Hydropower Project as well as Mangala Hydropower Project and Mangala Raising Agreement were also discussed.
The case was advocated by the well-known lawyer Raja Amjad Ali Khan and Haroon Riaz Mughal Advocate, and the decision was given in favor of the plaintiffs on November 15, 2019. Along with this, the various taxes levied by the Department of Electronics, especially fuel price adjustment charges and Neelum Jhelum project charges were also challenged in the Supreme Court by Shaukat Nawaz Mumir and others on behalf of the Government of Azad Kashmir and others through a writ petition. In which the Supreme Court stopped the Department of Electronics from taking FPA and NJS in Bilat.
In the same writ petition, during cross-examination, it was revealed that the Government of Pakistan has been selling electricity to the Power Department at Rs2.59 paisa per unit since 2007, which has created a lot of anxiety in the entire Azad Kashmir because the Power Department has been receiving the NEPRA’s decided rate of Rs40 per unit.
According to the report, the Awami Action Committees came into being after the protests started in Rawalkot on 8 May 2023 as a result of the flour crisis, which was initially named as Poonch Awami Action Committee. This movement which started from Rawalkot spread all over Azad Jammu and Kashmir when the Power Department distributed electricity bills for the month of August.
The government actually dropped a power bomb on the people by introducing two new terms of protected and unprotected in electricity bills and the people who consumed more than 200 units of electricity were left screaming when they received double the electricity bill. Students started a protest in Muzaffarabad against this move of the government, in which businessmen also threw their weight and called for shutter down and wheel jam on 31 August 2024 across Muzaffarabad.
In Poonch, the Action Committee made electricity as a topic of discussion along with flour and also included Mirpur where they gave calls for shutter down and wheel jam with the full support of the lawyer community in both the divisions. and then a vigorous movement was launched. During this time, the government of Azad Kashmir increased the price of electricity in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the AJK government refused to implement Pakistan’s rising electricity rates in Azad Kashmir and the tariff was frozen after June 2023. Realizing the direction of the situation, the government reached out to the Joint Public Action Committee for negotiations and for this purpose a committee consisting of nine ministers was formed which will hold detailed negotiations with the Public Action Committee.
Nine people were selected by the Jammu and Kashmir Joint Public Action Committee for talks with the ministers who held talks with the government team on November 3, November 8 and 9, November 29, November 30, December 7, December 10 and December 19.
During the talks, the Jammu and Kashmir Joint Public Action Committee presented ten demands to the government team. Subsidy equal to that of Gilgit-Baltistan should be given on flour. The electricity tariff should be fixed according to the production cost of electricity generated from Mangala Hydropower Project in Azad Kashmir.
