Senior politician Ghulam Nabi Azad said at his first public rally after severing his five-decade association with Congress on August 26, restoration of statehood for J&K, protection of land and jobs of its residents, and return and rehabilitation of displaced Kashmiri Pandits are on top of his newly-launched and still unnamed party’s to-do list. Azad spelled out his party’s agenda in front of more than 20,000 of his supporters gathered at Sainik Farms in Jammu for the rally.
Azad sought support from all sections of society “We have not yet decided the name of the new party and its flag. The people and leaders of both Kashmir and Jammu will be taken on board to finalise the name and the flag. He said it should be an “easy” name. It will be in neither Maulana’s Urdu nor Pandit’s Sanskrit. It should be a Hindustani name that everyone can understand. Right to ownership of land, right to employment for the domiciles would be the main agenda of our party. Another key agenda would be to facilitate the return of Kashmir Pandits without any compulsion. Outsiders should not buy land, either in Jammu or Kashmir, and jobs should not be given to them. How many jobs are available in Jammu and Kashmir? It is a trickle of water in a sea, and if the jobs are advertised at the national level, we will lose that trickle of water as well.”
Appealing to Kashmiri Pandits, an estimated 200,000 of whom fled Kashmir during the peak of separatist terrorism in the 1990s, “I am happy that children of our Kashmiri Pandit brothers have done well in America, Europe, Calcutta and Mumbai. Those who want to return must be given places to live in Kashmir.”
