Usually divided on various issues, Kashmir’s separatist leaders on Friday joined hands to put up sustained resistance to a Kashmiri Pandit group’s efforts to start a fresh yatra to the valley’s Kousar Nag lake.
A small group of 200 to 700 pilgrims goes to Kousar Nag from Chasana, Reasi, and returns after performing puja at Vishnu Paad on occasion of Nag Panchmi in the first week of August every year without any facilitation from the government. This year, Chairman of All Parties Migrant Co-ordination Committee Vinod Pandit applied for the government’s permission to start the yatra from Kulgam side of South Kashmir.
Radical Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani dismissed it as the Centre’s “sinister plan to turn Kashmir into India’s Gaza by strengthening the occupation of its land with a religious excuse.”
In a statement on Friday, when peaceful demonstrations were held at some mosques on his call, Mr. Geelani said the high altitude water body did not have “any relation with Hinduism.”
He claimed that the lake had assumed its name from the Arabic name “Houz-e-Kousar.”
JKLF Chairman Yasin Malik also opposed the yatra.
