Pandits Will Return To Kashmir Valley With Dignity, Says Ram Madhav

Having fulfilled its long-pending promise of negating Article 370 that gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has said that the next objective for the party is to ensure the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley. Large sections of the 400,000-strong Pandit community were forced to leave Kashmir in January 1990 following terror attacks and a secessionist movement spearheaded by extremist groups. Only a handful of Pandits live in the Valley now.

BJP’s national general secretary and in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir, Ram Madhav, said the transformation of the region after the bifurcation of the erstwhile state into two Union territories was underway and the process of return of Pandits to the Valley will begin only after consultations with the community leadership. Madhav, who was seen as the architect of an unlikely alliance between the BJP and the Peoples Democratic Party that formed the government in the state in 2015, said his party was committed to the return of Pandits with “honour and security”.