JKLF calls for shutdown as Yasin Malik threatens fast unto death 

Separatists declare war on BJP’s plan of composite townships for KPs

 

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

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Jammu, April 8: Narendra Modi government’s plan of settling the Kashmiri Pandit migrants in “composite townships”, for which Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had on Tuesday asked Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed to arrange land, has run into rough weather as the Kashmiri separatists have threatened to spoil it with full force.

Minutes after a separatist-turned-mainstream leader and independent MLA Engineer Rashid said in Assembly on Wednesday that the BJP-PDP coalition’s plan of settling the Kashmiri displaced Pandits in composite townships would be fought “tooth and nail”, JKLF Chairman Yasin Malik called for shutdown in Kashmir while threatening “fast unto death strike” if the government proceeded with the programme of rehabilitating the migrants in delineated settlements.

The second time MLA Engineer Rashid, who comes from the slain separatist leader Abdul Gani Lone’s Peoples Conference and pursues a pseudo-separatist agenda in Assembly, agitated the matter aggressively. He said: “Settling Kashmiri Pandits in separate townships will not be allowed to happen as it is detrimental to interest of every community living in Kashmir. The fact of the matter is that majority of Kashmiri Pandits is not interested in settling back in Kashmir as they are happy in enjoying perks, packages  and privileges” .

Rashid said that the PDP patron and Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was “unfortunately acting as a facilitator in the grand plan of the BJP brigade to communalize and polarize situation in Jammu and Kashmir”.

Rashid refused to accept that the Kashmiri Pandits had suffered enormously in the last 25 years of militancy. “It is the Kashmiri Muslims who have suffered a great deal”, he asserted with a threat. “Right-minded people and sane voices will not allow getting Kashmir converted into jungle of fascism and aboriginality of this land will be protected at all costs”.

In Srinagar, JKLF Chairman Yasin Malik stole the show with a hurriedly called news conference. He dismissed the government’s plan of rehabilitating the displaced Pandits in composite townships as a “sinister conspiracy” by the BJP-RSS fold. He alleged that Mufti had been assigned the task of “creating a wedge between different religious identities” in the State. Malik called a complete shutdown in the Valley on Saturday and threatened to go on fast unto death if the government did not withdraw the plan of settling the Kashmiri migrants in protected enclaves.

"We don't want confrontation but we are not going to tolerate attempts aimed at driving a wedge between different communities of the State either. We will not allow creation of this so-called composite township. It would be a state within the state and is fraught with dangerous consequences”, Malik said. He claimed that over 10,000 Pandits had stayed back in the valley in 1990 and they had never been harmed by their Muslim neighbours.

“They are continuously living with full sense of security and comfort”, said the separatist whose guerrilla group JKLF is alleged to have played key role in attacking the members of the minority community and forcing their mass exodus in 1990. Malik claimed that Valley’s tradition of communal harmony was intact.

"It seems RSS now wants to reverse it by creating a wedge between Kashmir's various communities. It is attempting through the BJP to set the Valley on fire. Yeh log nafrat ki aag lagana chahtay hain," militant-turned-politician Malik alleged.

"Are Mufti Sayeed and his RSS and BJP mentors now planning to dismantle these temples, homes, shops and schools and relocate these people to so-called composite townships?”Malik asked. "They are as good state subjects as you and me. They can come and buy properties and rebuild or renovate their houses here. That alone will strengthen Kashmir's composite culture”.

In a related development, Shabir Shah and some other Hurriyat leaders said that the plan of separate townships for Pandits was “akin to declaring war against the majority community of Kashmir". "We will oppose this dangerous conspiracy tooth and nail”, they asserted and called the rehabilitation plan as “replica of the Zionist ploy which Israel has used against the innocent Palestinians as a weapon of war”. Their statement added: “It is the beginning of one more well calculated dangerous conspiracy against the Muslim identity of Kashmir."

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Govt: KPs will be settled only in their native places

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

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Jammu, April 8: Grappling with a strongly negative reaction from the Kashmiri separatists, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s government denied on Wednesday evening that the displaced population was being rehabilitated in special settlements at particular places in the Valley.

In a press release, the government spokesman discounted what he called “misconstrued, misconceived and mischievous the impression being created by certain quarters regarding establishment of exclusive habitations for Kashmiri Pandits. He said the society and the Government was committed to “facilitate reintegration of migrant Pandits in their homeland with honour and dignity without compartmentalizing them as an isolated community”.

“As has been already made clear by the Chief Minister, the migrant Pandits are most welcome to return and resettle at the places of their choice, and various initiatives have already been taken by the State Government to bring them back with honour and dignity. The Government is keenly awaiting the return of migrants and they will be resettled at their original places of inhabitation with honour and dignity,” the spokesman said and added that the migrants from all the communities who had no land and properties left in Kashmir, could be accommodated in the composite township, if they desired so.

 

The spokesman said the creation of exclusive enclaves for migrants, as was done at Sheikhpora Budgam, had not worked as most of the Pandits who wanted to return to the Valley preferred to resettle at their ancestral places. “Braving the hazards of turmoil in Kashmir, several Kashmiri Pandit families continue to live harmoniously with their Muslim brethren in various parts of the Valley”, he added.

 

“The Kashmiri Pandits have every right to return to their ancestral land and get reintegrated in the society to revive the age-old tradition of brotherhood and amity,” he said and added that any facility for the purpose would not be “either religion or community-specific”.

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