Emphasising their rightful place in Kashmir, Dr Abdullah said that with their children engaged in employment and education, would the migrated community want to return, as they have built homes where they currently reside in other parts of the country?
File Photo: IANS
Ruling National Conference president Dr Farooq Abdullah on Monday said that displaced Kashmiri Pandits are always welcome to return to their homes in the valley and also expressed scepticism about whether they would come back 36 years after they migrated to different parts of the country.
Emphasising their rightful place in Kashmir, Dr Abdullah said that with their children engaged in employment and education, would the migrated community want to return, as they have built homes where they currently reside in other parts of the country?
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“Who is stopping them from returning to Kashmir? No one is preventing them. They should come back, as it is their home. Many Kashmiri Pandits are currently living in the Valley and have not left their villages,” Dr Abdullah said when asked about protests by Kashmiri Pandits supporting their demand for return and rehabilitation in the Valley.
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Dr Abdullah’s statement came on a day when the displaced community is observing 19 January as ‘Holocaust Day’ to mark their exodus from the Valley in 1990 due to threats and killings by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists.
Talking to reporters on the sidelines of a two-day party programme here, Dr Abdullah said that many Kashmiri Pandit families never left the Valley and continue to live peacefully in their villages and localities.
Hundreds of Kashmiri Pandits, under the banner of ‘Youth 4 Panun Kashmir,’ last evening blocked the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway near Jagti camp, demanding a separate homeland in the Valley for their return and asking for the passage of a bill in Parliament to recognise their genocide.
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