National Conference (NC) candidate Aga Ruhullah Mehdi, contesting from the Srinagar-Budgam seat, on April 29 apologised to Kashmir Pandits for the party’s failure to stop their migration in the wake of growing militancy in the 1990s.
“It was the grim and beyond-control situation that drove Kashmiri Pandits away from Kashmir and not us. Those were very tumultuous times. The guns that murdered you, murdered us too. We were as helpless as you were. Still, I think we (NC) could not find a way to save and stop the migration of Pandits. I apologise for that,” Mr. Mehdi, whose father was also killed in a militant attack in 2000, said.
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He said the people of Kashmir saw themselves as “incomplete without its minorities”. “I do not describe Pandits as minorities for they are Kashmiris, who have equal rights over this place and culture. They equally own this place,” Mr. Mehdi, a popular Shia cleric, said.
The NC leader said his party wanted to see “a dignified return of Kashmiri Pandits to the place of origins”. “We want engagement with Pandits and work out a roadmap for their dignified return to their birth places. We want to work with them and trade with them,” he said.
Mr. Mehdi accused the BJP of misusing the issue of Pandits. “How many Pandits were brought back to Kashmir by the BJP to their birth places? Instead, Bollywood films were made, which villainised Muslim Kashmiris and projected them as brutal people. It has vitiated the atmosphere,” he added.
Meanwhile, a joint meeting of the NC and Congress was convened at Pandit colonies in Jammu. Bushan Lal Bhat, a former legislator, and Shadi Lal Pandita, convener of the Congress Migrant Cell, presided over these meetings, in a bid to reach out to Pandits who, of late, had started voting for the BJP. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, 86% of Pandits voted for the BJP in the Kashmir valley.
