With Parliament today passing the Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Bill 2020, which does not include Punjabi as one of J&K’s official languages, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal said the voice of the people of J&K in support of the Punjabi language had been thus “muzzled”.

Expressing shock and anguish at the manner in which this Bill was “bulldozed” through Parliament, the SAD president said it was a matter of deep concern that parliamentary procedures had not been followed while placing the Bill for approval before Parliament.

He said the Bill was neither put on the agenda of the Lok Sabha yesterday nor the Rajya Sabha today. “Even today it was passed at the last minute in the absence of the Opposition,” the SAD chief said.

Badal condemned that the Bill was taken up for approval without taking into consideration the objections of the SAD as well as other regional parties of J&K.

He said while speaking in the Lok Sabha he had pointed out that Punjabi was not only the mother tongue of a large number of people of the current J&K Union Territory but was also a recognised language as per the constitution of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.

“Dr Farooq Abdullah of the National Conference, who is a former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, supported me and said a sizable number of Kashmiris also spoke Punjabi. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has also supported the inclusion of Punjabi as an official language in the Union Territory,” he said.

Badal said Punjabi was being spoken in J&K since the time of the Khalsa Raj of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and was widely used as a medium of instruction and was also a compulsory language along with Urdu till 1981.

“The first Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir – Mehr Chand Mahajan was a Punjabi and even now Punjabis constitute three per cent of the population of the state,” the Akali leader said.

Parliament today passed a Bill for inclusion of Kashmiri, Dogri and Hindi in the list of official languages in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, in addition to the existing Urdu and English. The Bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha through voice vote today. The Lok Sabha had cleared the legislation yesterday.

Significantly, the SAD has been one of the oldest allies of the ruling BJP. The SAD has also been up in arms against the Narendra Modi dispensation over its three controversial farm sector legislations.

Days after the SAD’s lone minister in the Modi-led Union government, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, quit her post in protest against the Centre’s farm sector legislations, the SAD yesterday announced a state-wide agitation in Punjab in order to press for withdrawal of these legislations.

The SAD’s proposed agitation against the Modi government’s farm sector Bills, which have now been passed by Parliament, would include a state-wide three-hour ‘chakka jam’ (road blockade) on 25 September as well as a ‘simultaneous kisan (farmers) march’ to Mohali on 1 October to hand over a memorandum, addressed to the President of India, to the Punjab Governor.