MUZAFARABAD: A meeting of the members of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir cabinet and parliamentary secretaries on Sunday decided not to present the 2022-23 budget in the event of cuts by Islamabad on the region's budgetary grants.

Presided over by Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas, the meeting was attended by 13 out of 16 ministers, three out of four advisers and special assistants and three out of five parliamentary secretaries.

Legislative Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Anwarul Haq, who has been functioning as acting president of Azad Kashmir these days, was also in attendance.

The meeting constituted a 12-member committee to take the opposition within and outside the assembly on board on the issue of budget cuts.

Another two committees were also formed to raise concern on this issue on traditional and social media.

According to an official press release, PM Ilyas regretted that the federal government was imposing budget cuts on the territories of AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan, both governed by the PTI.

“This territory (AJK) is not only the base camp of [Kashmir’s] liberation but also strategically important in view of India’s aggression at the Line of Control … It cannot afford budget cuts,” he was quoted as saying at the meeting.

“We will apprise the government of Pakistan of the region’s sensitive nature as well as the situation arising out of budget cuts,” he added.

Haq said budgetary cuts would leave a “negative impact" on the region.

According to the press release, the ministers maintained that Kashmiris had already been rendering sacrifices for Pakistan and “if Pakistan was still in need of their offerings, the federal government could stop their entire budget.”

The meeting decided to raise its voice in unison on the issue of budget cuts, the press release said.

Meanwhile, AJK Minister for Local Government and Rural Development Khawaja Farooq Ahmed also blamed the central government for demonstrating “bitter enmity” against the people of AJK and GB through “cuts on their upcoming budgets”.

While talking to media, he said the AJK government had been asked to prepare the development budget of the next fiscal year to the tune of Rs 29 billion.

"However, at the same time, we have been asked not only to foot the bills of the projects previously directly sponsored by the federal government but also to make payments of salaries to the employees of foreign-funded projects from the Rs29bn."

Already, he said, the federal government had slashed the current year’s development budget by Rs 5.2bn and since most of the development work against this amount had been done, this burden would also shift to the next year’s meagre allocation.