ISLAMABAD: Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Thursday that a demand by the Action Committee to abolish the 12 Azad Kashmir Assembly seats elected from Pakistan amounted to an attempt to sabotage the electoral process.
In a statement posted on X, Asif said AJK elections are scheduled for July 27 and the committee is demanding that the 12 seats allocated to Kashmiri refugees residing in Pakistan be abolished before the vote.
“Raising this demand before the election is tantamount to sabotaging the electoral process,” he said.
Asif said people advocating the change should present it to voters before the election and allow the public to decide what form of representation they want.
“That would be the democratic approach,” he said. “Otherwise it would be viewed as blackmail.”
The minister said Sialkot city and district constitute a full AJK Assembly constituency, while the area has two seats in Pakistan’s National Assembly. He added that other AJK constituencies are spread across Pakistan and include large numbers of refugees originally from Jammu.
Asif said more than 200,000 refugees settled in Sialkot city and district after the October 1947 violence. He said many people were killed, women were assaulted, and girls were abducted during the upheaval. He questioned how those refugees could be deprived of their political rights.
The statement comes days before the AJK election and highlights a dispute over the future of refugee representation in the region’s legislature.
