I know that election petitions are delayed, I quite concede that point. I do not want to hold a brief for anybody. Delay is delay, and delay in election petitions is not very good, I must concede that, but after these allegations were made, the representatives of the Election Commissioner went to Kashmir, Shri Bakshi himself made a reference to it, and they themselves suggested that it is much better that the election law of Kashmir is brought in line with Indian law, with the law of the rest of the country. Naturally that could not be done during the election period, that was undertaken immediately after that. As to why it was not done in March or June session, we know the fate of the legislative programmes in our sessions.
So, after this election law was amended, we received proposals from the Kashmir, Government recently. I had assured hon. Member Shri Bakshi that immediately I received these proposals, within ten days I will see that they are through and I want to tell him that the President has issued the necessary orders about the appointment of those Judges. I do not know if those Judges will be the only Judges who will look after the election petitions, these are the additional Judges, they are called ad-hoc Judges. Whether they will deal with only election petitions or other normal judicial work, I do not deal with know, but these appointments have been made. As far it as this point is concerned, I have acted on that, and I wanted to make it clear.
About the development programme of the Jammu and Kashmir Government, many aspects were raised, why expenditure was made on this and that. I have not got all the information from the Jammu and Kashmir Govern- ment to reply to all the points. Therefore I am not saying one way or the other, but I know one thing which I must say, and that is about the attitude of the Jammu and Kashmir Government about infiltrators, because I really came prepared for that, because this was the major aspect on which the motion was moved.
There I must say that this is a fact of life which has to be accepted, it is no use saying whether there is any communalism or not, I would not go into that; Acharya Kripalani has said much about it, it is much better that we take a realistic attitude. It is very difficult to say that there is no communalism, but one thing that must be said is that where there were violent communal clashes in the other parts of India, even though there were cormmunal feelings - I cannot say there were no communal feelings when I visited Kashmir - there was absolutely no communal clash between Hindus and Muslims. That must be accepted. No Hindu was attacked by a Muslim; no Muslim was attacked by a Hindu. There is something in the Kashmir tradition which we must accept. Who can say that there may not be communal feelings ? But the point is, so far as day to day work with each other is concerned, Kashmir has some lesson to offer us. That must be conceded.