Kashmiri Pandits threaten nationwide agitation in Delhi

New Delhi: A section of displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Delhi, on Monday, warned the Central government of a nationwide agitation if the government failed to work for the welfare of the community which has been denied basic constitutional rights ever since its exodus in January 1989.

The community has also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah for not visiting any Kashmiri Pandit migrant camps in over six years, while they lauded former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who had visited one of these camps during his tenure.

In a memorandum that the community will send to the Prime Minister, the group wrote, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have not visited the camps ever since they came to power. The community remembers former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is the only Prime Minister to visit these camps.”

Addressing a press conference at the Press Club of India here, the chairman of Reconciliation, Return & Rehabilitation of Kashmiri Migrants, Satish Mahaldar accused political parties of paying only “lip service” to the community while not working on the ground.

“Everyone has been promising us a return to the valley but no one has actually worked for it. In January this year when the entire cabinet was traveling around the former J&K state no minister visited the migrants' camps for the community in Jammu. This shows we are deliberately ignored by them,” Mahaldar said.

Mahaldar added that every political party was playing politics in the name of religion and not for the sake of humanity and civil rights.

“Kashmiri Pandits were forced out of their homes in Kashmir, they have been forced to live like refugees in their own country, and no opposition party or human rights organization is concerned about it,” Mahaldar added. In 1995, the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) in its historical full commission judgment, headed by former Chief Justice of India M.N. Venkatachaliah, held the systematic ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits by terrorists as an act of genocide. (IANS)

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