Central leader of the banned Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), Shaukat Nawaz Mir, was arrested along with an associate in Dhirkot, Muzaffarabad Deputy Commissioner Munir Qureshi said on Tuesday.
The DC said Mir was arrested by police and security personnel from the Hail Sarang area. He added that Mir and his associate have subsequently been moved to an undisclosed location.
It is noteworthy to mention here that the AJK government had imposed a ban on the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) on June 5 under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) after violent protests.
The group’s latest protest campaign centres on its demand to abolish the 12 seats in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly reserved for refugees from Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) who migrated to Pakistan after 1947.
The federal government has described the demand to abolish the reserved seats for Kashmiri voters residing in Pakistan as an attempt to disrupt the electoral process ahead of the July 27 elections for the 53-member AJK Legislative Assembly.
Earlier this month, an All Parties Conference (APC) convened at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat in Muzaffarabad unanimously rejected the demand to abolish the 12 Legislative Assembly seats reserved for refugees residing in Pakistan.
The participants had maintained that any constitutional reforms fall exclusively within the mandate of the people’s elected representatives and cannot be determined through extra-parliamentary means.