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Kashmiri Pandits to take out protest march

Kashmiri Pandits, who will be completing 10 years of their migration from the valley on January 19, have organised a global signature campaign and will take out a protest march up to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's residence in New Delhi to highlight their ''decade-long unresolved'' problems.

Signatures of at least 40,000 people from all over the world have so far been collected and Kashmiri Pandits from all over the country are expected to participate in the march, Ashok Manwati, a spokesman of Panun Kashmir, said today.

It was on January 19, 1990, that militancy came out in the open in the valley forcing millions of people to migrate to Jammu. More than 350,000 Kashmiri Pandits migrated to Jammu, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore, Lucknow and many other places all over the country.

Manwati said some prominent people are also expected to participate in the protest march.

He said that while the world was face to face with the new millennium, Kashmiri Pandits were confronted with nothing more than ''painful and heart-rending experiences of their decade-long forced exile''.

He said that while terrorism continued for the past 10 years, the government, both state and Central, were yet to come out with a comprehensive policy to curb the menace and rehabilitate the Pandits.

After the protest march on January 19, the Pandits will present a memorandum to the prime minister seeking an early and effective solution to the problem.

UNI

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