Shaukat Nawaz Mir, the central leader of the proscribed Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), was apprehended along with an associate in Dhirkot, Muzaffarabad, confirmed Deputy Commissioner Munir Qureshi on Tuesday. The arrest was carried out by police and security forces in the Hail Sarang area.
Following their detention, Mir and his companion were transferred to a secret location. This development comes after the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) government imposed a ban on JAAC on June 5 under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), following a series of violent demonstrations.
JAAC’s recent protest activities have focused on their demand to eliminate the 12 seats in the AJK Legislative Assembly reserved for refugees from Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) who migrated to Pakistan after 1947. This demand has been strongly opposed by the federal government, which views it as an effort to undermine the electoral process ahead of the July 27 elections for the 53-member assembly.
In a significant development earlier this month, an All Parties Conference (APC) held at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat in Muzaffarabad unanimously dismissed the call to abolish the reserved seats for Kashmiri refugees residing in Pakistan. The conference participants emphasized that any constitutional amendments must be made solely by the people’s elected representatives and cannot be decided through extra-parliamentary actions.
