Jammu, April 13
The papers of a Pakistani national, Zulfikar Ali, who had fielded himself as a candidate for the Jammu Lok Sabha seat, were rejected this evening by Returning Officer Naveen Chaudhary following the re-scrutiny of his documents.
The Election Commission had earlier in the morning ordered re-scrutiny of his papers .
Zulfikar Ali had filed his papers as a candidate of former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar’s Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya).
The Returning Officer, while rejecting his papers, observed that the nationality of Zulfikar Ali was disputed and, moreover, he was not registered as a voter in the electoral list.
The incident has put a question mark on the role of the authorities who issued him a state subject certificate in violation of the orders of the High Court that rejected his application for Indian citizenship.
Zulfikar Ali, who is among the 27 candidates for the seat, had filed his papers on March 31 here and these were found to be in order by Mr Naveen Choudhary. However, one Mohammad Naseem yesterday filed a complaint that Zulfikar was a Pakistani national.
Seeing the peculiarity of the incident, the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr B.L. Nimesh, got an inquiry
conducted by the Deputy Commissioner of the border district of Poonch into the matter, and it was detected that the complaint was correct, and Zulfikar Ali along with his
father, Fakkar Din, and other family members had come to Salwan village in Mendhar on Pakistani passports and visa in 1983. However, they continued to stay on even after the
expiry of their visa.
Mr Nimesh immediately despatched these papers to the Election Commission that ordered a re-scrutiny of his papers.
Investigations revealed that Zulfikar Ali had managed to get himself registered as a voter and had attached a copy of the voter list of 1995 with his papers. However, his name was deleted when the voter list was revised last year. His brother Iftikar Ali had managed to get himself recruited in the police on the basis of the state subject certificate issued by the district authorities of Poonch.
His father, Fakkar Din, had come here along with his wife, Fatima Bibi, four sons and five daughters in 1983 on Pakistani passports and visa for a specific period. Their passports were bearing numbers AK-396860, AK-396885, AK-396870, AK-396886 and AK-396872.
Thereafter, they tried to become Indian citizens by approaching various forums, but did not succeed. Then they filed an application in the High Court, seeking that they should be declared permanent residents of the state.
The High Court on August 17,1990, dismissed their petition and ordered that they were Pakistani nationals and had come to India on Pakistani passport and they had no right to file the petition for their settlement in the state.
However, in connivance with certain officers even after the orders of the High Court, Zulfikar Ali and his two sisters, Shazia Tabasum and Khalida Tabasum, managed to acquire state subject certificates on April 6,2000. His two brothers, Mohammad Shafiq and Iftiqar Ali, were illegally issued the certificates on August 25,1998, although they have not been declared residents of the state by the government.
Iftiqar Ali managed to get himself recruited in the Jammu and Kashmir police on December 15,1997, in the sensitive Poonch district where the Pakistani terrorists were most active.
Interestingly, neither the Central and nor the state governments took any steps to deport the family to Pakistan as they were staying here far beyond the duration specified in their visa.
His father had migrated to Pakistan during partition of the country in 1947, but illegally returned here in 1957. He reportedly again migrated to Pakistan in 1965 and then returned in 1983 on Pakistani travel documents.
When contacted by this correspondent in the morning, Zulfikar Ali claimed that he was an Indian and he owned 125 kanals in his native village. He described the complaint before the election office as a conspiracy of various political parties.
