Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 26: A three -member delegation, headed by Ashwani Kumar Chrungoo, senior BJP and Kashmiri Pandit leader, met the Delimitation Commission in Delhi today. The other members of the delegation included Utpal Kaul, GKPD In-charge India Chapter and Kashmiri Sikh activist, Sardar Harbans Singh.
The delegation also submitted a memorandum to the Commission highlighting their sufferings in last over 31 years of exile. The memorandum was submitted to Justice Ranjana Desai, chairperson of the Commission in presence of Sushil Chandra, Chief Election Commissioner and Umesh Sinha Deputy CEC during the meeting.
The memorandum said that it was in 2017, that the erstwhile Legislative Assembly of the Jammu and Kashmir State passed a resolution on January 19 emphasising the need for return and resettlement of the displaced Pandits in the Valley.
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which the KPs approached in 1994, in its decision in June 1999 said that ‘acts akin to genocide were committed against the Pandits and a genocide type design may exist in the minds and utterances of the militants and terrorists’, the Delhi High Court observed that ‘the Pandits are the victims of ethnic cleansing’.
The J&K High Court termed the mass exodus of the Pandits as unparalleled and adjudged that it can’t be equated with any other displacement of the people in the State. The Government of India a couple of years back, classified the atrocities against the Pandits as genocide.
Amnesty International and US Committee for Refugees called the displacement of the Pandits as the consequences of the selective attacks by gunmen and terrorists.
With the change of narrative on Kashmir over the last couple of years and particularly with effect from August 2019, there is an imperative need to create an atmosphere of accommodation for Pandits in Kashmir.
It said in order to secure the political rights of the Hindu-Sikh communities in the Valley, the memorandum proposed that the delimitation process need to reserve five seats in the Assembly of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir for these victim minorities of the Valley.
It demanded reservation or nomination of five seats for the minorities of the valley (Kashmiri Pandits, Kashmiri Sikhs and non-Kashmiri speaking Hindus of valley) in the Assembly of the UT in the process of delimitation along with reservation and nomination of one seat each in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha respectively for them.
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