Anupam Kher backs separate township for Kashmiri Pandits

Veteran actor Anupam Kher on Sunday backed the demand for a township for Kashmir Pandits and lashed out at separatists for opposing the plan.

Kher welcomed the government's plans to resettle tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits in three new townships in Jammu and Kashmir and asserted that the former were a peace loving community which had swallowed all kinds of humiliation over the years.

"Now the word ghetto that has been used, I don't know who coined it, some sick mind has coined that because there is a difference in a ghetto and being asked to come and settle down in the same place. It pains me not only as a Kashmiri Hindu but also as an Indian that we have to refer to these people as somebody who is going to be part of a ghetto. This whole separatist non-sense, I think I am sorry to say but who are these separatists?" Anupam Kher told media here.

Kher went on to question the authority of separatists to decide for Kashmiri Pandits and said that the separatists were not elected representatives or a group which had a fan-following but just a group of people thriving on media attention.

"You leave your place because there is not other alternate. You go and live in tents, in refugee camps in various localities because people are sort of being kind to you by allowing you to stay there and you get the name of a refugee in your own country. You are unfortunately a refugee in your own country because you are thrown out of your own houses. It has taken 25 years for the government to finally come with a plan of resettling these Kashmiri Pandits," he added.

Earlier this week, all shops, business establishments and schools remained closed in Kashmir following the 'bandh' call by the separatists to voice their protest over a reported state government move to create a separate township for Kashmiri Pandits.

On Thursday, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed said that he will take all stake holders into confidence before accepting Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh's request for creating separate zones for Kashmiri Pandits in the state.

Mufti's statement came after he had on Tuesday assured Rajnath Singh that his government has accepted the demand for creating separate zones for Kashmiri Pandits in the state.