Youth JKPC

*JKPC Youth Organises X Space on EWS Quota, Party Spokespersons Flag Stark Jammu-Kashmir Disparity* *Student Leaders, Luminaries, Social Activists & Journalists Express Views on Rationalisation Reform* The Jammu and Kashmir Youth Peoples Conference organised an X Space on the rationalisation of the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) quota, aimed at advancing the demand raised by PC President Sajad Lone for the removal of the glaring regional disparity between the Jammu and Kashmir divisions. The session was led by People’s Conference (PC) spokesperson Sheikh Rizwan Muneeb Quraishi and co-hosted by Suhail Mir, drawing a diverse and distinguished gathering of young voices, student representatives, journalists and other prominent participants. Among those present were student representatives Sahil Parray, Mir Mujeeb and Er. Sameer, alongside journalists Azhar Hussain and Umar Maqbool, as well as several other recognised personalities and luminaries. The gathering provided a substantive platform for an exchange of ideas, with participants offering their perspectives, observations and insights on the issues under discussion. Moderating the session, Rizwan opened by asking how poverty is defined in Jammu and Kashmir and whether the existing mechanisms identify economically disadvantaged youth fairly. He recalled that the Centre introduced EWS reservation to serve the largest section of the population lacking resources, including the urban and small-town poor. Citing government data provided in response to Sajad Lone’s questions in the Assembly, he revealed that 26,544 EWS certificates were issued across the Union Territory over the past two years. Of these, 24,058 went to the Jammu division and a mere 2,486 to Kashmir, meaning more than 90 per cent of certificates went to one division and less than 10 per cent to the other. This, he noted, is despite some 37 to 38 lakh people in J&K falling under the Priority Household (PHH) and Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) categories. With nearly 40,000 vacancies awaiting recruitment, Rizwan cautioned that the skew would be carried over into jobs. Jammu would claim the lion’s share of the 10 per cent EWS quota, while Kashmir would receive less than a tenth of it. JKPC spokesperson Muneeb Quraishi called the present reservation framework a burning issue and termed it “apartheid”, saying it had been engineered as a political stunt. He accused several parties of exploiting the quota for electoral dividends and alleged that the ruling dispensation was ignoring open-merit youth for fear of losing reserved-category votes. He credited Sajad Lone as the only legislator to raise the matter consistently in the Assembly, armed with statistics, and said Lone had also carried the issue to the common man through Kashmiri-language videos, despite facing mockery. Responding to calls for ground-level action, he said the party had been quietly fighting “terrible battles” with tehsildars and other officials, case by case, to secure the rights of the youth. Muneeb further argued that the quota arrangement has rendered merit-based cut-offs meaningless. Open-merit candidates face prohibitively high cut-offs while others are elevated, he said, a trend that would erode the quality of J&K’s future talent pool. He cautioned that the constructive energy of the youth must neither be ignored nor suppressed, lest it turn destructive. Sahil Parray pointed out that the promise of a resolution is now more than two and a half years old, yet no sub-committee report has been made public. He spoke at length about the deepening disparities in the reservation framework and criticised the elected government’s continued reluctance to make the committee’s findings public. Dismissing the 100-square-yard condition as “a joke”, Parray urged political leaders across party lines to unite in support of open-merit youth, stressing that this is a pivotal moment in the region’s history and that their collective stand