Following nation-wide emotions created by the sensational The Kashmir Files film by Vivek Agnihotri, the Congress is likely to introduce a private member bill in Parliament to ask the Union Government to ensure “without delay” the rehabilitation of the Kashmiri Pandit community in the Valley, reported Times of India.
The Bill titled the Kashmiri Pandit (Recourse, Restitution, Rehabilitation and Resettlement) Act, is to be introduced by Congress MP Vivek Tankha in the Rajya Sabha, reported TOI, adding it will focus on “restoration of encroached properties and providing a large security and employment umbrella to encourage their return.”
This will put the spotlight back on Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government, as it has been encouraging film The Kashmir Files which has reignited the discussions on the mass migration of the Kashmir Pandit community from the valley in 1990. Many BJP leaders have also defended the film and spoken up for it on various occasions since its release this month.
Ashwani Kumar Chrungoo, senior BJP leader of J&K had also said earlier that it was an “appropriate time for the government to establish and institute a Special Crimes Tribunal to go into the issue of genocide against the Kashmiri Pandit community and the other minority communities of Jammu and Kashmir who bore the brunt of terrorism in J&K for the last thirty-five years.”
Several opposition parties are now coming out with a demand to publish a white paper by a panel headed by a retired Chief Justice of India, which will also cover the eight years of BJP regime at the Centre and its earlier government in the state, the enquiry commission is bound to look into the 1989 period when the exodus took place under the VP Singh government which was supported by BJP.
MP Tankha’s bill will also seek that the government “institute an elaborate infrastructure to facilitate the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley, with a focus on security, heavy investments for promoting entrepreneurship among families who return, quotas for education and jobs, and a monthly family support for them”.
Above all, it wants the community to be declared a “minority” under the National Commission for Minorities Act. Other elements of the Bill, according to the news report, include “restoration of the property of Pandits that has fallen to encroachment” and that “all the property sale after 1989-90 should be declared “distress sale” which is null and void, and restored to original owners.”
