People’s Conference to move SC to streamline police verifications
The Jammu and Kashmir People’s Conference on Thursday said it would approach the Supreme Court regarding the present process of police verification, describing it as a “chronic case of collective punishment against the family”.
“Encouraged by the judgment over “bulldozer justice”, where the Supreme Court clearly ruled that it was a collective punishment against the family, the JKPC official will approach the Supreme Court with a plea that the system of police verification in J&K is a more chronic and serious case of collective punishment against the family,” the party wrote on X. It said that in the name of national security, the law of natural justice was violated.
People’s Conference chief Sajad Lone, separately, said, “An adverse police verification certificate because a relative has an adverse police record is also a form of collective punishment against the family, Kashmir-specific Stone Age justice,” he said.
For the last few years, the security agencies have been denying positive police verifications to the family members of a person who is involved in any adverse activity.
In the first Assembly session, the legislators too had raised the issue of the verification process. Congress chief whip and Bandipora MLA Nizam-ud-Din Bhat had brought up the issue of police verifications in regards to getting employment and demanded the review of the whole policy.
He even discussed a case from his constituency, where a young orphan was selected as for the post of a lecturer twice, but was denied entry into the service as her “juvenile brother was once named in a stone-pelting FIR.”
People’s Conference president Sajad Lone too had raised the matter in the Assembly, saying that the issue was earlier limited to passport, but now it has been extended to other matters as well. He demanded that the process be brought on a par with states like Haryana, Gujarat and other parts of the country.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had also said that the verification process, especially CID verification, regarding jobs, passports and other things was being weaponised.
