Srinagar: A 25-member delegation of Kashmiri Pandit employees, which met Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha at the Raj Bhavan Srinagar on Friday, has refused to budge from the consistent demand of their relocation outside the Valley in the aftermath of the killing of a fellow employee Rahul Bhat. Bhat, who had been recruited under the PM package was shot dead by militants on May 12 at the tahsil office in Chadoora of central Kashmir's Budgam district.
Ever since the killing, the Pandit employees have been protesting and demanding that they be relocated outside the Valley. Avinash Khanna, spokesperson of Kashmiri Pandit Migrants Association, who met LG Sinha on Friday, reiterated the demand for relocation. "We do not want any concessions or a safe accommodation, but our only demand is that we be shifted out of the Valley to Jammu or any other safer place and reunited with our families.
"Until our demand is met, the protests will continue," Khanna added. He said that the LG administration had assured them that their demands will be looked into. “They assured us that our issues, including pending promotions, will be looked into. But, we have categorically made it clear that everything else is subordinate to our survival,” Khanna said. Khanna said they also handed over the copies of the “threat letters we have been receiving from time to time” to the LG.
