Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Oct 1: Overall 30.22 percent votes were polled by displaced Kashmiri Pandits in third phase of Assembly elections in three districts of North Kashmir spreading over 16 Assembly segments at 24 specially established polling booths at Jammu, Udhampur and NCR Delhi.
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According to Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner who is also Returning Officer of Displaced Kashmir Pandit voters, Dr Arvind Karvani out of 18,357 registered displaced Pandit voters for the three North Kashmir districts 5545 turned up for casting their vote in the third phase today.
The Relief and Rehabilitation Department had made special arrangements for voters at all polling booths in Jammu and Udhampur.
Out of 24 special polling booths for migrants 19 polling booths were established in Jammu district, one in Udhampur district and four in Delhi NCR.
Sanjay Ganjoo, a social activist who cast his first vote at polling booth Bantalab KV School said the vote is a great power which every responsible citizen should exercise. Opposing those who have given boycott call or have asked community to press the button of NOTA he said this way the community gets alienated. “We being nationalist people should be on forefront in strengthening the democratic structure of the country and this is a big challenge to those who tried to make our nation bleed,” he added.
Like previous time the Relief Department had made special arrangements for plantation of trees in camp schools by elderly voters for migrant voters. The RRC also visited all polling booths to oversee the arrangements.
The Kashmiri Pandit voters at various polling booths said that they are casting the vote with the hope that there will be an end to their exile and the newly elected public representatives will forcefully take up their rerun and rehabilitation issue in their homeland Kashmir with Central Government.
Seventy-six-year-old Badri Nath, who has voted in several Parliamentary and Assembly elections, cast his vote optimistically in the third and last phase of Assembly polls, expressing a wish for the restoration of his home in the Valley.
“I am voting once again in the hope that the new Government will deliver justice to our community by fulfilling the demand to return to our homes in the Valley,” said Nath, who originally hails from North Kashmir’s Bandipora district, after casting his vote at a Polling Station in Muthi in Jammu district.
Criticizing past Governments for their failure to address the issue, he said, “The Governments led by Farooq Abdullah in 1996, followed by Mufti Sayeed and Ghulam Nabi Azad from 2002 to 2008, Omar Abdullah in 2009, and Mehbooba Mufti-BJP in 2014 failed to address the rehabilitation issue.”
He added that successive Congress and BJP Governments at the Centre also made minimal efforts to fulfil their demands.
“We hope that our next voting will be in Kashmir,” Nath said.
A majority of nearly three lakh members of the community reside in Jammu and Delhi, who have been living in exile for 35 years since the insurgency in Kashmir forced them to leave their homeland.
Like Nath, young entrepreneur Vikas Raina, whose father, a principal, was assassinated by Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terrorists along with two lecturers in 1997, voted in Sopore constituency along with his wife Jagriti, and expressed hope that the Government would not only implement rehabilitation plans in Kashmir but also ensure employment opportunities for the youth.
“It is crucial to ensure the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits as soon as possible. Alongside job opportunities in both Government and private sectors, youths should also be provided land and loans to start business in the Valley,” Raina emphasized.
He said that over 6,000 employees, who have been recruited under the special PM employment package, should be settled in one-place township as part of the rehabilitation.
Over 18,000 Kashmiri Pandits were registered to vote in the third and final phase of elections across 16 Assembly segments in three districts of North Kashmir.
Sixty-seven-year-old Surinder Dhar, who fled his home in a remote hamlet in North Kashmir’s Kupwara district in 1990, expressed his wish to return to his roots with his vote. “But our demand for ‘ghar wapsi’ (homecoming) is yet to be addressed. We hope the new Government will address this.”
Every year on January 19, Kashmiri Pandits commemorate their “exile” from the Valley.
Many youngsters, including first-time voters Khushi from Baramulla and Neha from Kupwara, also cast their votes at Polling Stations in Jagti and Nagrota camps.
They said that their votes were not just for the permanent rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits but also for a “stable and strong” Government capable of addressing both domestic and international challenges, and ensuring the eradication of terrorism.
Former MLC and BJP spokesperson G L Raina who also cast his vote at a polling booth in Jammu said the Election authorities have made overall arrangements of polling for displaced persons in all three phases.
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