Panic-stricken Kashmiri Pandit staffers firm on relocation from Kashmir Valley

J&K administration grapples with security concerns

The Jammu and Kashmir administration and protesting Kashmiri Pandits engaged in a face-off on Wednesday, as the security forces disallowed street protests and stopped fear-stricken Pandit employees, recruited under the Prime Minister’s Rehabilitation Package since 2008, from leaving the Valley.

More than 4,000 Pandit employees have threatened to leave the Valley by Thursday morning. They have decided to go on mass migration, announced by their leaders, from various transit camps spread across the Valley.  

“No Pandit employee was allowed to leave their locations by the police on Tuesday,” a Pandit employee, living in Srinagar’s Indira Nagar locality, said. 

Kashmir has been witnessing daily protests by Kashmiri Pandits ever since Rahul Bhat, a Pandit government employee, was killed on May 12 inside his office at Chadoora in Budgam. 

“Many of our neighbours living in the transit camps are in a deep cycle of depression because of Bhat’s killing. We see a bleak future for our kids in Kashmir. The latest killing of the schoolteacher, Rajni Bala, has further disturbed us mentally. It seems our lives have no value. In case the government does not come up with concrete measures, we will go for mass migration and leave for Jammu tomorrow,” a protesting employee said in Srinagar.

The Lieutenant-Governor administration is in talks with the leaders of the Pandit employees to address their demands. However, the administration has dropped broad hints that it was opposed to the idea of migration of employees from the Valley. 

In the wake of the threat of mass resignation by those living in the transit camps, security was beefed up at all the camps at Nutnusa in Kupwara, Tulmulla in Ganderbal, Hall in Pulwama, Khanpur in Baramulla, Mattan in Anantnag and Vessu in Kulgam. Mobile bunkers were placed in the lanes leading to the houses of Pandit employees in Indira Nagar and Sheikhpora.