KASHMIRI people in the Wycombe area are being urged to write in their ethnic origin on the census forms that come round next month.

The forms give people broad ethnic descriptions to tick: White, Mixed, Asian, Black, Chinese, with sub-divisions.

The Asian sub-divisions are Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi. Kashmir, which is currently partitioned between India and Pakistan, doesn't get a mention, though its people want it to become a separate country.

The idea is for them to write Kashmiri into the box asking for "any other Asian background".

According to Abdul Kalik, of the Kashmiri Freedom Campaign, who lives in High Wycombe, if all the 100,000 Kashmiri people in the UK did this, is would be a clear statement to the government about the strength of their feelings.

At last week's district council meeting the Mayor of High Wycombe, Mahboob Hussain, pointed out that there were 12,000 Asians in High Wycombe and 80 per cent of them were from a Kashmiri background.

He called for the council to recognise how many different cultural heritages there were in the district and said this would be better known about if people specified their background in the box in the census form for "any other background".

Brian Pollock (Lib Dem) said people valued their cultural backgrounds and knowing about them would help the council when it looked at the sort of services needed in the future.

Roger Colomb, the council's Tory leader elect, said High Wycombe had a rich diversity of people and cultures and the census would give the council an opportunity to learn things it didn't know at present.

He said if Cllr Hussain's motion was passed, officers should think about ways of publicising the fact that people could fill in the extra box on their census form.

Lesley Clarke (Con) said everyone should do it, including English people, and Labour councillor Nigel Vickery added that he would be putting Welsh on his form.