Ganderbal: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said the migrant Kashmiri Pandits can go to their native places after their 'confidence grows' in the transit camps.
“We will provide them alternative transit accommodation, and as and when they feel like going back and permanently settling at their native places, they should go of their own choice and not by force…. Once their confidence grows then they can live wherever they want,” Mehbooba said after paying obeisance at the Kheer Bhawani shrine in Ganderbal district.
“As a part of this programme, the government has decided to temporarily settle the returning Kashmiri Pandits in mixed transit accommodation till the situation is feasible for them to go back to their native places,” she added.
Pointing out that leaders and cadres of most of the mainstream parties and even separatist groups had migrated from their native places because of security reasons, she said: “How can we force the Kashmiri Pandits to return to their places?”
Mehbooba said the occasions like Mela Kheer Bhawani offered a great opportunity to bring the Kashmiri Muslims and migrant Pandits together to build new bonds of mutual trust and brotherhood, which would in the long run facilitate the return and the rehabilitation of the migrants in Kashmir.
Referring to the Wanpoh incident last night where Pandits devotees were caught in a stone-throwing incident, the Chief Minister said it was a stray incident wherein a stone unfortunately hit a passing vehicle carrying devotees to the Kheer Bhawani shrine.
“While some 80 vehicles carrying pilgrims had already passed through the area, unfortunately one vehicle crossed over the same time when some miscreants were throwing stones at the newly established Police Post at Wanpoh,” she said, adding that two devotees had suffered minor injuries in the incident and both of them had now reached the Kheer Bhawani temple to join the festivities.
Strongly condemning the incident, the Chief Minister said such mindless acts of stone-throwing and other forms of violence only brought miseries to the people and a bad name to Kashmir, with the tourism sector being the first casualty.
“While most of the boys and girls from Kashmir, including the wards of Kashmiri Pandits, are toiling in various states in extreme hot weather conditions to make their careers, unfortunately certain vested interests in Kashmir are hell-bent on ruining the lives and careers of youths, especially from underprivileged sections of society, by misusing them as stone-throwers,” she said while urging such quarters to desist from exploiting the poor boys for furthering their vested political interests.
Keeping their tryst with the Hindu deity Mata Ragnya, hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits on Sunday paid obeisance at the Tullamulla shrine in north Kashmir’s Ganderbal district.
Using different modes of conveyance, Kashmiri Pandits, most of them migrants, started reaching Tullamulla town, 24 km from Srinagar, since Saturday evening.
The annual festival of Mata Kheer Bhawani, the name used by local Pandits for goddess Ragnya, is celebrated each year on this day. Despite their exodus from Kashmir Valley in the beginning of 1990s due to separatist violence, members of the Pandit community have not given up their practice of visiting the temple.
Around 13,000 migrant Pandits, including men, women and children, gathered at the shrine by midday Sunday to offer ‘Kheer’ (rice pudding) and flowers to propitiate the goddess.
Keeping the centuries old tradition alive, Muslims living in the town came to greet the devotees.
Some Muslims also offered milk to the devotees which was received with love and reverence by members of the Pandit community. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti also visited the shrine in the morning. Mufti was accompanied by professor Amitabh Mattoo, advisor to the Chief Minister with a Cabinet Minister’s status.
A group of migrant Pandits shouted slogans blaming the separatists for their migration and for opposing their return to the valley. They also accused the mainstream political parties of “non-serious approach to problems faced by the Pandit community”.
Raj Kumar Bamzai, 46, a migrant who originally belonged to Habba Kadal area of Srinagar city led a group of protesters shouting slogans against a stone pelting incident in Anantnag district on Friday. Two women travelling to Tullamulla in a bus sustained injuries in the incident.
“The Government says it will give us separate colonies and sometimes it says we will be settled at our ancestral places,” Bamzai told IANS. “These are all political talks because whosoever heads the government, Pandit community is only used as a political tool and nobody wants to address our problems.”
