Migrants Demand Constitutional Safeguards

We want full constitutional guarantees, an effective law and order machinery and a responsible government so that our confidence is restored in the democratic process in Jammu & Kashmir, All State Kashmiri Pandit Conference (ASKPS) president A N Vaishnavi said in Jammu.

The Conference is a representative body of more than 300,000 Kashmiri migrants living in Jammu and other parts of the country.

The faith of the displaced community in the democratic setup has been shattered as successive governments have failed to provide protection and safeguards to us, Vaishnavi said.

Regarding a call by several migrant organisations to boycott the current polls, he said: We have only expressed our plight through non-participation in the ongoing Assembly polls.

 

But, Kashmiri Pandits did not boycott parliamentary polls in the state as they believe in greater integration of the state with India, he added. Blaming the Congress for the plight of Kashmiri migrants, he said, the community had high hopes from the United Front government.

Vaishnavi, who was the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate from Srinagar in the recent parliamentary polls, said the members of the majority community in Kashmir were also sympathetic towards their plight but the leaders had exploited them too for selfish motives.

Referring to their migration from the valley in 1990, he said the community was not prepared for another exile. The government should give us a guarantee of security if it wants us to go back to the valley.

He said the Pandits will support any government in the state provided it was nationalist with secular ethos and adhered to the Indian Constitution. The primary thing is what security it will give to us, he added.

He said the government had failed to institute even an inquiry into the cause of their forced exodus and also the silent exodus right from 1947 due to patent discrimination in complete violation of the Constitution.

He warned that they would file a criminal case against electoral officers who had allegedly forged the postal ballots if thepoll panel did not take cognisance of their complaints.