The Hindu : 'Ensure internal security'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 30, 2003

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'Ensure internal security'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI MARCH 29. A delegation representing Kashmiri Pandits today met the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, to voice their concern "over the bankruptcy of the Government of India on Kashmir.''

In a memorandum against the background of the Nadimarg massacre, the team said the Centre was more concerned with "keeping international opinion happy than providing security and protection to its peaceful, secular and law-abiding citizens.''

Sunil Shakdhar of the Kashmir Samaj said the delegation's purpose was to ask Mr. Advani what the Centre's policy on Kashmir was.

It was "the duty of the Centre, the Home Ministry and the Home Minister to ensure internal security of the country.'' Successive Governments in Jammu and Kashmir had not talked to the Kashmiri Pandits nor had the Centre's interlocutors.

In the 13 years of their dispossession the Jammu and Kashmir Department had failed to address the concerns of the community. As things stood the prospects of "peace and of our return are bleak.''

The Deputy Prime Minister, according to the lawyer Ashok Bhan — who was part of the delegation — said he shared their concerns and "expressed his displeasure at the State Government''and was "critical of its policy of releasing militants.''

To address the Kashmiri Pandits' concerns from the Centre he promised to revive the nodal cell in the Home Ministry, administered by the Special Secretary (Kashmir).

The cell, set up in 1994 to deal with the day-to-day problems faced by Kashmiri migrants, had ceased to function after 1996.

Mr. Shakdhar said Mr. Advani also promised that the Centre's latest interlocutor, N.N. Vohra, would open a dialogue with the representatives of the Kashmiri Pandit community.

The delegation included, among others, the All-India Kashmir Samaj, represented by its president, M.K. Kaw, the Kashmiri Samiti, represented by Mr. Shakdhar, the Jammu and Kashmir Vichar Manch and the All-India Kashmiri Pandit Conference.

The meeting, which lasted over an hour, was attended by the Home Secretary, N. Gopalaswami, and the Special Secretary in charge of Jammu and Kashmir, Ashok Bhandari.

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