SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik on Friday said the Government is in the process of formulating a policy for rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits.
Addressing the media at a function at SKICC to mark the launch of electric buses in Srinagar, Malik said: “A policy is being formulated and more details will emerge soon.”
The Governor also said that the hoteliers and houseboat owners were dumping sewage into Dal Lake. “Their licenses will be cancelled if they don’t install Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs), ” he said.
Recently governor Malik justified the concept of building separate townships for returning Pandits, saying locations for such boroughs had already been identified and work was underway to develop them.
Earlier this month moderate Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and a four-member team of KPs decided to constitute a committee which will find ways to facilitate the return of the displaced Pandit community to the Valley.
In 2015, immediately after the BJP entered into an alliance with the regional PDP to form a government in the restive state, crisis erupted over a proposed move of the state government to provide ‘separate homeland’ to migrant KPs.
Separatists leaders and militant outfit Hizb-ul-Mujhadeen had termed the plan to create a separate homeland for Kashmir Pandits as ‘agenda of fascist forces in India’. The move was shelved after it threatened to divide Jammu and Kashmir along communal lines with protests erupting in both the regions in favour and against the proposal. (PTK)
