The long-forgotten 76-year-old Dixon Plan has once again entered the political spotlight amid escalating war of words between certain BJP and Kashmiri leaders following the demand of the former to grant statehood to the Jammu region by separating it from the Kashmir valley.
The controversy generated by BJP MLA Sham Lal has snowballed with certain Kashmiri leaders saying that the separation must come but under the formula proposed in September 1950 by Sir Owen Dixon, a UN representative and former chief justice of Australia, aimed at resolving the Jammu and Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan.
However, the BJP has distanced itself from the demand for separating the two regions.
A day after the PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti, during her visit to Rajouri, floated the idea of creating separate divisions for the Chenab and Pir Panchal regions of Jammu, ruling National Conference (NC) chief Dr. Farooq Abdullah yesterday said that the idea is a Dixon Plan.
“It is a Dixon Plan. You might not know that. The Dixon Plan is an old proposal which envisaged division on the basis of the Chenab river, creating a Greater Kashmir Valley on one side of the river and separating this part,” Farooq said when asked about Mehbooba Mufti’s demand.
He said there are many people who want to further break the state, but they won’t succeed in their designs.
Reacting to Farooq Abdullah’s statement, Mehbooba Mufti said he should not forget that his father, the late Sheikh Abdullah, was arrested for the ‘Dixon Plan’.
“This can be the agenda of the National Conference, late Sheikh Abdullah, for which he was arrested, but not of the PDP. I didn’t talk about any Dixon Plan. PDP’s only agenda is the restoration of peace in J&K through dialogue and development”, she added.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was the first to respond to the BJP leader’s demand.
“They separated Ladakh and ruined it completely and now, if they want to separate Jammu and ruin it as well, let them do it”, he said.
Dr. Karan Singh, who is the son of the last Hindu ruler of J&K, Maharaja Hari Singh, has also rejected the idea of separating Jammu from the Kashmir valley.
“How much more will you slit Jammu and Kashmir, which was once a sprawling region?” he asked in a recent interview.
Peoples Conference chief Sajad Lone has questioned the Kashmir-Jammu unity and advocated a “cordial split”.
Lone called for a profound and uncompromising reassessment of the Kashmir-Jammu relationship and advocated the possibility of their separation.
He argued that while Kashmiri leaders routinely claim the moral high ground of secularism, Kashmiri students continue to be beaten, humiliated, and targeted across the country.
Lone urged people to abandon recycled narratives and think independently, noting that even ordinary Kashmiris are, for the first time, beginning to calculate how much they have lost by remaining bound to Jammu.
A former mayor of Srinagar, Junaid Azim Mattu, made a fervent, humble appeal to all leaders, from the Kashmir Valley to the Chenab Valley, to voice their support for statehood to Greater Kashmir, the Kashmiri-speaking area.
“History won’t forgive us if we are apologetic about the dignity of the ethnic Kashmiri we claim to represent,” he added.