J&K Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Syeed meets Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh

Mufti Mohammad Sayeed with Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Tuesday. (Source: PTI photo)

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed assured the Centre that it will soon acquire land for creating “composite townships” for displaced Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley.

For the first time since he took over as J&K CM, Mufti Sayeed met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday and briefed him about the situation in the state. The meeting also assumes significance with murmurs that the PDP may get a berth in the next expansion of the Union Council of Ministers. He is slated to meet prominent Cabinet ministers in the Centre to take up and deliberate upon issues pertaining to his state.

After meeting the PM, he also called on Home Minister Rajnath Singh. He informed Singh that his government “will expedite the return of the Kashmiri Pandit community to the Valley with dignity and honour as the cultural milieu without them remains incomplete,” a state government release said. Earlier, a MHA spokesman said Singh had asked Sayeed to provide land in the state for composite townships for Kashmiri Pandits and the CM “assured the Home Minister that the state government will acquire and provide land at the earliest.”

The issue of return of nearly 62,000 families of Kashmiri Pandits, who had to leave the Valley in the wake of militancy more than two decades back, was in the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) of the BJP-PDP alliance in the state.

“Protecting and fostering ethnic and religious diversity by ensuring the return of Kashmiri Pandits with dignity, based on their rights as state subjects and reintegrating as well as absorbing them in the Kashmiri milieu. Reintegration will be a process that will start within the state as well as the civil society by taking the community into confidence,” the CMP had said.

Singh had written a letter to the previous Omar Abdullah government which was followed by another communication to Governor N N Vohra asking for identification of land for such migrants. During the Budget for 2015-16, Rs 580 crore has been earmarked by the Centre for the rehabilitation of migrants.

Source:: Indian Express