Azad Kashmir protests for basic rights. Recently, we have seen a huge protest in Azad Jammu and Kashmir state by the Kashmiris for their basic rights. This time, their ultimate and big demand is the end of 12 refugee seats of their legislative assembly. These seats are for the refugees who have settled in Pakistan since the independence of Pakistan. The number of these refugees is more than 2 million and they are settled all around in Pakistan, in all major cities and provinces of Pakistan. Therefore, after the year 1974, the government of Azad Kashmir allocated 12 refugee seats for these refugees who are settled in various cities of Pakistan. The MLA for these seats are chosen from and among the refugees. They contest elections in various cities of Pakistan like in Lahore, Karachi. Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, and then they go to the Legislative Assembly of Azad Kashmir. But on the other side, the Joint Army Action Committee, Azad Kashmir, and more recently, is demanding to end these 12 refugee seats in the Legislative Assembly of Azad Kashmir. Why Kashmiris are demanding to end 12 refugee seats in AJK Assembly? Here, multiple reasons that Kashmiris are demanding to end the 12 refugee seats from the Legislative Assembly of Azad Kashmir. First of all, Kashmiris are of the view that the fund that is getting by the MLAs from AJK are not utilized properly. For example, if we talk about the Lahore seat of AJK Assembly of Refugees, the member of Legislative Assembly receives billions of dollars, billions of rupees from AJK Exchequer, but it is not possible to spend on the refugees of constituency of specific MLA due to their scattered arrangements in the city. The house of one refugee is at one place, whereas the other refugee is located at many kilometers far from other refugees. Therefore, in this way, the various schemes of construction of roads, health facilities, and education facilities cannot be fulfilled due to the scattered nature of their settlement of refugees in various areas of Pakistan. In this way, the expenditure of funds is questionable. Similarly, the Kashmiris are of the view that these 12 seats are used to topple the governments in Azad Kashmir. There are currently 53 seats of members of the Legislative Assembly in the AJK Assembly, and to form the government, there is a need of 27 seats. In this way, these 12 seats played a very critical role, and historically, these seats are used to topple the government, to end the government without any logical reason. So these are the reasons that Kashmiris are demanding to end these seats from the AJK Assembly.
