The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Two Pak nationals cast votes?
Shariq Majeed
Tribune News Service

Rajouri, December 15
In a case that raises serious questions about the fairness of elections in the state, two of the four members of a Pakistani family have cast their votes in the recently held elections in the district. The family, which has overstayed its visa by more than 27 years, got settled here and its members even managed to get permanent resident certificates.

Sources in the district administration revealed that two members of this family, comprising Ghulam Zohra, widow of Sarwar Hussain, at present settled in Ujhan (bearing number 1,286 in the electoral rolls for the Darhal Assembly segment), her two sons Mustafa Tariq (1,287) and Murtaza Tariq (1,288) and daughter Rafeen Tariq (1,289), voted in the recently held elections in the Darhal Assembly segment in this frontier district.

They added that the members of this family casted their votes at Government Girls Middle School, Ujhan, (polling station No. 23 of the Darhal Assembly segment) on November 23 in the second phase of the seven-phased Assembly elections in the state.

The sources said the head of the family, late Sarwar Hussain Tariq, a Pakistan national, had migrated to the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in 1965 along with his wife Ghulam Zohra and had attained the Pakistani citizenship. In the PoK, Zohra had given birth to three sons and three daughters.

On October 22, 1980, Sarwar Hussain, along with his wife and six children, came on a Pakistani passport to Ujhan in the Darhal area in Jammu and Kashmir on a one-month visa. However, before their visa would have expired, Sarwar managed to get it extended by another two months, the sources added.

The government tried to deport the family to Pakistan, but Sarwar approached the high court seeking directions for resettlement in the state on the grounds that they were already the permanent residents of the state, the sources said. On August 19, 1982, the high court stayed their deportation and since then the family had been under surveillance, they added.

Chief Electoral Officer, Jammu and Kashmir, B.R. Sharma told The Tribune that “I am not aware about the case. We will enquire into the matter and would take action. However, for that I would seek a report from the district electoral officer concerned into the matter”. Meanwhile, an officer in the district administration told The Tribune that the state government had already ordered a probe into the Pakistani family acquiring permanent resident certificates.