Raising slogans against Lt Governor Manoj Sinha and the administration, the demonstrators, mostly government employees posted in the troubled valley and their kin, demanded that they be provided adequate security or be transferred to Jammu. The employees also threatened en masse resignation from their jobs.
A group of Kashmiri Pandit employees, who were given jobs under a prime minister's package for the community, on Wednesday began preparations for "mass migration" out of Kashmir, protesting against a series of targeted killings of non-Muslim employees by terrorists.
Bullet-proof vehicles, wall-through radars and drones are some of the new gadgets inducted by the Central Reserve Police Force into its counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir, leading to precision-based actions against terrorists.
Terrorists have stepped up attacks in the Kashmir valley over the past week.
Members of a Kashmiri Pandits organisation, led by Sandeep Mawa, have been sitting on a fast-unto-death for the past four days in Srinagar pressing for their demand.
Puran Krishan was attacked near his residence in the Chowdhary Gund area of south Kashmir district, they said, adding that doctors declared Krishan brought dead after he was shifted to Shopian hospital.
While a verified Twitter handle of the Information and Public Relations department of Shopian claimed that the news about leaving of 'Kashmiri non-migrant Hindu population' was 'baseless', Ashwani Kumar Bhat, whose brother Puran Krishan Bhat was gunned down by terrorists on October 16, told reporters in Jammu that he has migrated and will never return to the Valley.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday gave its consent for jailed Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdul Rashid, popularly known as Engineer Rashid, to take oath as MP on July 5. Additional sessions judge Chander Jit Singh will pass an order on the plea on Tuesday.
Additional sessions judge Chander Jit Singh granted the relief to Rashid, who had moved the court seeking interim bail to campaign in the upcoming Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections.
'We want to ensure that no government in J&K will be formed without our support.'
A court in New Delhi on Tuesday granted two-hour custody parole to Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdul Rashid to take oath as a Lok Sabha MP on July 5.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday reached out to displaced Kashmiri Pandits, saying he and his family belong to this community, and promised them all help.
Called Herath, this was the first major Hindu festival being celebrated in the Valley after Jammu and Kashmir was changed into a Union territory last year.
There are about 1,300 Kashmiri students studying at the AMU currently.
Ajay Pandita, sarpanch of the Larkipora area in Anantnag district and a member of the Congress party, was shot at by terrorists in his native village at around 6 pm, a police official said. He said Pandita was rushed to a hospital where he succumbed to injuries.
National Conference president Farooq Abdullah attended Kashmiri Pandit businessman Makhan Lal Bindroo's funeral on Wednesday.
Citing media reports, KPSS chief Sanjay K Tickoo claimed that the Hindus living in Kashmir wanted to leave the Valley but the government was not allowing them to do so.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com tried to buy a house on his recent visit to Srinagar.
Sinha made the remark amid the ongoing protest by migrant Kashmiri Pandit employees and Jammu-based reserved category employees who left the Valley for Jammu in May following the targeted killings of their two colleagues -- Rahul Bhat and Rajni Bhalla. The protesting employees have been seeking relocation outside Kashmir.
'Families think 100 times before sending their children to mainland India.'
Kashmiri Pandit businessman Sandeep Mawa, whose salesman was killed here in a militant attack believed to be aimed at him, on Wednesday said he will not leave Kashmir and remain in Srinagar despite opposition from his family.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah asserted that the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019 was crucial in ending terrorism in Kashmir. He stated that the provision fostered separatism among Kashmiri youth and impeded the region's full integration into India. Shah also highlighted the development initiatives undertaken in Jammu and Kashmir post-Article 370, including a reduction in terrorism, successful local body elections, and an increase in tourism and film production. He emphasized the significance of writing India's history with facts and evidence, countering narratives that had obscured the country's rich heritage.
"If a person is shot inside his office, nobody is safe in the valley. When such a thing has happened it is a glaring example of the government's failure. Those serving (among the Kashmiri Pandits) there are doing it at their own risk as the government has failed to provide security to them," Bhat's father said.
'Such incidents can only exacerbate the sense of alienation among the Kashmiri people, in particular the Kashmiri youth.' 'It is as if for some of our political figures and misguided youth, Kashmir is a piece of real estate over which we assert our claim, but the people there are dispensable,' notes former foreign secretary Shyam Saran.
The killing of a Rajput driver by a terrorist has generated a sense of fear and uncertainty among members of the tiny community in Kakran village in Kulgam district who have stayed on in Kashmir Valley despite decades of militancy but are now considering leaving for a safer place.
Travelling from South India to Kashmir in December was magical for Ganesh Nadar as he feasted his eyes on the beauty of the snow-capped Himalayas.
A curative petition was filed in the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking reconsideration of its 2017 order dismissing a plea which had sought investigation into the alleged mass murder of Kashmiri Pandits in the valley in 1989-1990.
Inflencer and vlogger Shenaz Treasury chooses her favourite quiet spots.
Shah was arrested on July 25, 2017 with six others, facing trial in an alleged terror funding case probed by the NIA.
It's just not a date. It's just not about selecting a candidate. It's not about helping some candidate win. It's about expressing emotion, after ten years, that could reach out in India and beyond it, notes Sheela Bhatt.
Separatists and their wide network must be neutralized for peace in the Valley
Jammu and Kashmir Lt Governor Manoj Sinha assured the newly elected legislative assembly on Monday that the Omar Abdullah government will make all efforts for the restoration of full statehood and constitutional guarantees available to the state.
The separatist amalgam appealed to the international community to intervene in putting an end to the daily violence and tragic loss of life in Kashmir by "pushing for the resolution of the lingering Kashmir conflict, which is the root cause of all this suffering".
The mass exodus of the Kashmiri Pandit community changed the very cultural ethos of Kashmir and there has been little turnback despite three decades having gone by since it got triggered by growing fundamentalism fuelled from across the border, Supreme Court judge Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said on Monday.
'I want to break the notion that models can't act.'
Singh, 31, and Rashid, 56, won the recent Lok Sabha elections from Khadoor Sahib in Punjab and Baramulla in Jammu and Kashmir, respectively, as Independents while being incarcerated.
A government employee belonging to the Kashmir Pandit community was shot dead by suspected militants at his office in the Chadoora area of Budgam district of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, officials said in Srinagar.
'You are a Kashmiri first. You are not an Arab.' 'Revisit our traditional sufi thought.'
Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits kept their annual date with the Khir Bhawani festival at north Kashmir's Tullamulla temple, about 30 kms from summer capital Srinagar, on Monday.
The students largely hail from towns in south Kashmir and were brought home by CRPF personnel after they gathered in Jammu Monday night, he said.
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