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Students from Jammu are considering joining hands with their counterparts from Ladakh and floating a political outfit to contest the forthcoming assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir.
Speaking to rediff.com Rajinder Jamwal and Ghulam Ali, president and vice-president of the Jammu Students Joint Federation said they have lost confidence in existing political parties and have decided to take things into their own hands.
"We firmly believe that the people of Jammu and Ladakh have been ignored and politically marginalised," Ghulam Ali said.
"We want the power to legislate. Nothing short of reorganisation of the state on regional lines would satisfy our aspirations. The people of Jammu and Ladakh want a more rational reorganisation of the state," he added.
"Jammu has 37 seats in the present assembly. Over seventy thousand people in Jammu region can have one MLA to represent them in the state assembly whereas each MLA in the Kashmir valley represents only 50,000 people," Jamwal pointed out
"This is a gross anomaly and needs to be rectified," he said.
"We have seen the All Assam Students' Union leading an agitation against foreigners in the state and later floating a political outfit, the Assam Gana Parishad. We do not rule out the possibility of floating a political party later in case the existing ones do not live up to our expectations," Jamwal said.
So far, political parties in the state have not reacted to this proposal of the students of Jammu and Ladakh.
The two students leaders lashed out at the National Conference and the NDA government at the Centre for holding talks on the autonomy issue and instead asked the two to heed their demand to reorganise J&K on a regional basis.
The two student leaders also condemned the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the All Parties Hurriyat Conference for taking extremist views on J&K.
"Anyone who adopts a fundamentalist approach needs to be condemned, whether it is the Hurriyat or the RSS," they said.
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