Clusters to come up for Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir: Deputy CM

The Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh today said the government has started the process of identification of land in the Kashmir valley so that"clusters" for the Kashmiri Pandit community can be constructed where they can live for sometime before permanently shifting to their original homes.
"As a first step we are identifying the land and clusters shall come up in the form of two bedrooms and like that (where) these families will go back and stay there and whenever they feel safe they will go to their original homes", Singh told reporters on the sidelines of a function this evening.

He said that clusters in the form a township would provide transitory place for the migrant community.
"It is a township, its a cluster as a transitory cluster for all migrate which include the Kashmiri pandits who are in majority and then there are Sikhs there are Punjabi speaking Muslims, Kashmiri speaking Muslim, the people who were forced to leave their houses from the valley in the 25 years," Singh said.
He said that the chief minister Mehbooba Mufti in her today's speech in the Assembly has made the intention of the Jammu and Kashmir government clear, that it wants to take back the migrant community to the Kashmir valley.

"Actually if somebody has heard that speech of the chief minister that was very good. She has affectively said that we are going to take these Kashmiri pandits and other migrants to valley and our final objective is that they go to their original homes," he said.
Adding he said, "but as a transitory accommodation we are going to construct some clusters and they shall be settled there and they shall live there and when finally the situation is conducive they shall go to their original homes, wherever they were living," he said.
When asked whether the chief minister was trying to appease the separatists who were against the setting up of separate townships for the Kashmiri Pandit community Singh said that there was no case of showing any softness to them.