For Kashmiri pandits, striking down of Article 370, which abrogated Kashmir’s special privileges, by the Central government has nothing to do with their rehabilitation.

JAMMU: Though living in ‘forced exile’ within their own state for over three decades now, the longing to return to their homeland in the turmoil-hit Kashmir Valley has not waned among a majority of the Kashmiri Pandits in this Hindu-dominated town.

“I still am eager to set foot on the soil that we were forced to leave long back,” said Shobha Kaul, an octogenarian woman living in Kashmir’s winter capital since the 1990s.

She has been living in this town, ringed by forest-clad low mountains along with her family, since the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in the 1990s, after fleeing their homes in the troubled Valley because of the terror attacks that were targeted against the community that time.

For them striking down of Article 370, which abrogated Kashmir’s special privileges, by the Central government has nothing to do with their rehabilitation.

“Article 370 abolition will not guarantee evolving of harmonious relationship between the Muslims and the Kashmiri Pandits. In fact, it is creating anger and unrest in a particular community,” Kaul said.

“Our brothers and sisters in the Valley should be honourably won over through non-discriminatory policies before ensuring our return to our homeland,” she added.

Another woman Lalita Pandit said she was born in a small village on the outskirts of Srinagar. “I miss the snowy mountains and orchards,” an emotional Lalita told IANS at the Raghunath Temple here, where she is a regular at morning prayers.

Jammu hosts thousands of Kashmiri Pandit refugees, who have been living in newly build two-room tenements provided to them by the state government.

Octogenarian woman Nirmala Bhatt said: “Before I die, I want to return to my first home that is now under illegal occupation of a Muslim family.”

She said: “Every Kashmiri Pandit has hopes of returning to the homeland one day. I owe my gratitude to people of Jammu, where I have lived most of my elderly life.”

With fond memories of her homeland, the 81-year-old has raised a new generation and they too want to return to the Kashmir Valley.

“We have struggled hard to raise our children by initially staying in refugee camps for years. Now, I have grandchildren, who were born and brought up here and they too are keen to return to our homeland,” she added.

However, the children born and brought up in Jammu are more hopeful of returning to the Valley than the older generation.

“My parents and grandparents often talked about their cottages amidst apple and plum orchards by showing black and white photos of their happier times. We see a ray of hope of our return sooner rather than later,” college student Nikita Dhar, who is living in Jagti, the biggest refugee housing complex for Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu, said.

For the young generation like Nikita, returning to their ancestral homes, which they have never seen, is their dream now.

“This is our aspiration and struggle too,” she added.

Another Kashmir Pandit, S.N. Pandita, 69, said: “Before fleeing from south Kashmir’s Shopian in the early 1990s, we were threatened and tortured by the militants. They destroyed our temples and illegally occupied our houses and orchards.”

According to him, Kashmir is “our hometown and Kashmir can’t grow minus Kashmiri Pandits, who are part and parcel of the Muslims for centuries”.

He said before revoking Article 370 tension was lessening. “We see an escalation of tension once again and don’t know how much time it will take to normalise the situation there,” he added.

For the displaced Kashmiri Pandits, the Centre had announced the Prime Minister’s Development Package on November 7, 2015.

Under this package, the Central government had approved the creation of 3,000 additional state government jobs for the Kashmiri migrants at a cost of Rs 1,080 crore, and the construction of 6,000 transit accommodations in the Kashmir Valley at a cost of Rs 920 crore for the stay of these employees.

The aim of this package was to help the displaced community economically, and also to initiate a step towards their return to the valley.

Remembering Sushma Swaraj, Modi said the BJP leader had a ‘Haryanvi touch’ as she put across her points forcefully if she believed she was right.

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday that Sushma Swaraj as external affairs minister transformed her ministry from being bound to protocol to one oriented to “people’s call” and recalled she had urged him to deliver his first UN speech from a prepared text and not speak impromptu.

Joined by leaders from all major parties, Modi paid rich tributes to the BJP stalwart, who died last week, at a condolence meeting here.

The prime minister said he learnt a lot from her and then spoke about his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 2014, months after he had assumed the office for the first time.

After she received him, he suggested that they sit together as he had to deliver his speech the next day, Modi said.

Swaraj enquired where his speech was and he said he never writes his speeches as he finds it difficult.

“She said, ‘aisa nahi hota hai bhai’ (It does work like this brother). You have to speak about India to the world. You cannot speak as you wish. I was prime minister and she was my colleague minister taking care of the external affairs ministry,” Modi said.

The prime minister said he had undertaken a long travel and was also on fast due to ‘navratra’ but she insisted he share his thoughts.

The ministry prepared a draft speech for him, he said.

“It was her request. One may be a fine orator but there are some forums which have their own traditions.

This was the first lesson Sushma ji had taught me,” he said, adding that she had the courage to speak what she believed to be right.

Referring to Swaraj’s prompt response to Indians facing problems abroad or related to the ministry, he said she transformed the ministry.

“She changed this whole thrust in the ministry about protocol into people’s call. India is with all Indians living abroad in their pain irrespective of the colour of their passports,” he said.

The number of ‘Passport Seva Kendra’ rose to 505 under her from around only 77, he said.

Remembering her, Modi said the BJP leader also had a “Haryanvi touch” as she put across her points forcefully if she believed she was right.

Noting that she died hours after expressing her joy as Parliament passed the government’s resolution to abrogate provisions of Article 370 that gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, the prime minister said she was very happy and died peacefully.

Swaraj had tweeted on August 6 that she had been waiting to see this day in her life.

Hours later, she suffered a massive heart stroke and passed away.

BJP leaders, including Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and party’s working president J P Nadda, besides Anand Sharma of the Congress, Rajiv Ranjan of JD(U) Dinesh Trivedi of the Trinamool Congress, Pinaki Misra of the BJD, LJP’s Ram Vilas Paswan, Shiv Sena’s Arvind Sawant and opposition leader Sharad Yadav were among others who spoke at the condolence meeting.

Representatives of AIADMK, DMK and TRS also spoke.

Hailing Modi for his historic decision, the refugees say the abrogation of Articles 370, 35-A would certainly end decades-old discrimination against them by entitling them to get citizenship rights.

JAMMU: West Pakistan Hindu refugees, whose ancestors had migrated to India during the 1947 partition and settled in the Jammu region, were feeling stateless and cheated even after seven decades of living in Jammu and Kashmir.

Now with the scrapping of Article 370 and 35A, which prevented them to settle permanently and own property, will automatically become the residents of this state.

“Earlier, we were residents of India but not of Jammu and Kashmir. With the scrapping of both statutory provisions, we will automatically become the residents of Jammu and Kashmir too,” Labha Ram Gandhi, President of West Pakistan Refugee Action Committee, told IANS here on Tuesday.

After 72 years of India’s Independence, he said the West Pakistan refugees got natural justice. “We can proudly say now – – we have got freedom from slavery,” an elated Labha Ram, 57, whose parents migrated during the Partition, said.

The population of the West Pakistan Refugees is nearly 1.5 lakh, settled only in the Jammu region in the erstwhile state.

They say they are entitled to vote in Parliament elections but not in the State Assembly before the abolition of Article 370. Also, state laws prohibit them from buying property and to get government jobs.

Hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his bold historic decision, the refugees say the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35-A would certainly end decades-old discrimination against them by entitling them to get full citizenship rights.

Labha Ram Gandhi said their demands for rehabilitation and right to vote and to contest the State Assembly or local bodies would be accepted automatically now.

In 2017, West Pakistan refugees had challenged Article 35A, which was added to the Constitution by a Presidential Order of 1954, in the Supreme Court.

He said that the West Pakistan refugees have been seeking conferment of basic natural and human rights.

“We have migrated from Pakistan to India in 1947. At that time our people were assured that they should stay in Jammu and Kashmir on the assurance that they would be granted permanent resident certificates (PRC), which would allow them to purchase properties and get a government job,” he said.

Laba Ram Gandhi said the successive state and Central governments had only promised to extend the PRC to the refugees, and in fact cheated them by denying their basic rights of education, employment, property ownership and political participation.

“We finally feel like a citizen of the state with the repealing the discriminatory law. This will also help restore normalcy in the Valley with the opening up of the industrial sector for the outsiders,” he added.

College student Richa Gupta, whose grandparents migrated to India in 1947, said only the refugees settled in Jammu and Kashmir were facing discrimination.

“The Pakistani refugees who opted to settle in other parts of the country after the Partition got all benefits, including citizenship, and accordingly became prosperous. But here we literally we have been living a life of irony as basic rights were being denied to us because of Article 370 and Article 35A,” she added.

The West Pakistan Refugees migrated to India mainly from Sialkot district of Punjab province in Pakistan.

Locals say besides Indian citizenship, a permanent resident certificate (PRC) was given to those refugees whose ancestors have lived in the state for at least 10 years before May 14, 1954.

Only those with PRC could buy property, get employment and vote in the assembly. But now all this is set to change.

According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, 5,764 families, comprising 47,215 people, migrated from West Pakistan in 1947 and settled in different areas of the state.

The spacecraft will approach the moon on August 20 and then the spacecraft’s liquid engine will be fired again to insert it into lunar orbit, the ISRO said

BENGALURU: Trans Lunar Insertion (TLI) manoeuvre of the Chadrayaan 2 which will put the spacecraft into the Lunar Transfer Trajectory (LTT), a direct trajectory towards the moon, was held on the early hours of Wednesday.

All eyes were set on the spacecraft, as Indian Space Research Organisation chairman K Sivan and other scientists including a former chairman, keenly tracked its progress and health at the Mission Operations Complex (MOX) at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru with support from Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) antennas at Byalalu, near Bengaluru.

After firing the onboard liquid engine for 20 mins, Chandrayaan-2 left the earth’s orbit to enter the lunar trajectory, where it will travel for six days, before reaching the moon’s orbit.

The injection has been on ISRO’s the list of challenging aspects of the mission, apart from the first soft landing on the moon’s south polar region, preventing damage due to lunar dust and navigating large distances accurately.

It was held after the spacecraft raised five orbits around the earth between July 23 to August 6.

Now, the Chandrayaan2 is scheduled to reach the moon’s orbit on August 20, a little before which, the liquid engine will be fired again to insert it into the lunar orbit.

Then, the spacecraft will have four-orbit manoeuvres around the moon and finally enter the final orbit, closest to the moon’s surface — at a distance of about 100 km. 

“Vikram lander will separate from the orbiter on September 2. Two orbit manoeuvres will be performed on the lander before the initiation of powered descent to make a soft landing on the lunar surface on September 07, 2019,” said ISRO officials

“Since its launch on July 22, 2019, by GSLV MkIII-M1 vehicle, all systems onboard Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft are performing normal,” officials added.

Varthaman, who became the face of a tense military confrontation between India and Pakistan, is set to fly MiG-21 within a few weeks as a medical board cleared his return to fighter cockpit.

NEW DELHI: Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who spent some days in Pakistani custody when his MiG-21 was shot down in a dogfight with PAF jets a day after the February 26 Balakot airstrike, will be conferred the Vir Chakra on Independence Day, sources said Wednesday.

The 36-year-old IAF pilot had suffered injuries while ejecting from his MiG-21 Bison during the aerial combat between Indian and Pakistani air forces on February 27.

Varthaman, who became the face of a tense military confrontation between India and Pakistan, is set to fly MiG-21 within a few weeks as a medical board cleared his return to fighter cockpit.

Official sources said IAF’s Bangaluru-based Institute of Aerospace Medicine has given the go-ahead to Varthaman to fly again following a thorough medical evaluation.

Varthaman was captured by the Pakistani Army on February 27 after his MiG-21 Bison jet was shot down in a dogfight with Pakistani jets during aerial combat.

Before his jet was hit, he downed an F-16 fighter of Pakistan.

Varthaman was released on the night of March 1 by Pakistan.

Days after he returned from Pakistan, Varthaman conveyed to IAF brass his wish to return to fighter cockpit at the earliest.

IAF fighter jets bombed a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Balakot, deep inside Pakistan on February 26, nearly two weeks after the Pulwama strike.

Pakistan retaliated on February 27 by attempting to target Indian military installations.

According to the official, the pilot detected an error while the aircraft was taxiing, after which the pilot aborted takeoff.

NAGPUR: A New Delhi-bound IndiGo flight carrying Union minister Nitin Gadkari and 158 other passengers failed to take off from Nagpur airport in Maharashtra on Tuesday morning due to a “technical fault”, an official said.

Another attempt made sometime later by the flight’s pilot to take off also failed, he said.

The IndiGo flight 6E-636 was supposed to take off from Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport here at 7.50 am and reach Delhi at 9.35 am.

“It did not take off due to a technical fault,” the airport’s senior director Vijay Mulekar said.

“Subsequently, around 10.30 am, the flight made a second attempt to take off but was pushed back again due to the technical snag. There were 159 passengers on board,” he added.

Gadkari’s office here confirmed that the senior BJP leader, who is a Lok Sabha member from Nagpur constituency, was onboard the flight when it returned from the runway.

No loss of life or damage to property was reported, regional disaster management cell chief Santosh Kadam said.

PALGHAR: An earthquake of magnitude 3.2 shook parts of Palghar district in Maharashtra on Tuesday morning, an official said.

No loss of life or damage to property was reported, regional disaster management cell chief Santosh Kadam said.

The quake, having its epicentre at a depth of 10 km in Dundalwadi village of Dahanu taluka, was felt around 5.38 am, he said.

The district’s Dahanu area has been experiencing such tremors since November last year, with most of them centred around Dundalwadi village.

The scheme seeks to cover 50 crore beneficiaries in the country, including over 60 lakh beneficiaries in Odisha.

BHUBANESWAR: A day after former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan appealed to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for immediate implementation of Ayushman Bharat, BJP MPs from the State made a similar request to Naveen on Monday.

In a joint letter to the Chief Minister, 12 BJP MPs from the State said, “We request you to adopt and implement Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) scheme across Odisha helping the country in progressively achieving universal health coverage and strengthening our commitment towards a healthy India.”

Drawing the attention of Chief Minister to the immense benefits AB-PMJAY has to offer, the BJP MPs said it allows nation-wide portability through which Odisha’s beneficiaries, especially needy migrant workers, can avail health care facilities anywhere in the country.

The State will also gain access to latest technological, fraud-control and analytical platforms developed by National Health Authority (NHA) without any financial burden and immensely benefit from benchmarking the best practices across India.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his five visits to the State over past nine months had never missed an opportunity to request your support in enrolling Odisha for reaping the benefits of the Ayushman Bharat programme,” the letter stated.

The BJP lawmakers said, “Modi has rightly said Ayushman Bharat, the world’s largest health care programme, is a game changer and an opportunity to serve the poor.”

The scheme seeks to cover 50 crore beneficiaries in the country, including over 60 lakh beneficiaries in Odisha.

Since inception of the scheme, the BJP has been assiduously seeking the support of State Government for implementation of the AB-PMJAY scheme keeping in mind the acute public health challenges in the State.
“We were encouraged to learn about the State Government’s reconsideration for implementation of AB-PMJAY following discussions between Health Minister Naba Kishore Das, Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi and CEO AB-PMJAY Indu Bhusan, subsequent to the June 3, 2019 letter by Union Minister of Health Harsh Vardhan to you,” they said.

Assuring that the State Government will not face any financial crunch, the BJP MPs said their collective efforts will ensure that the State gets adequate funding under this flagship scheme from the Centre.

Noting that festivals should be exempt from levies, CM Mamata Banerjee had urged organisers, participants and all people “who love Bangla” to join the protest.

KOLKATA: The Trinamool Congress on Tuesday began its eight-hour-long dharna in central Kolkata in protest against the central government’s decision to serve income tax notices to Durga Puja committees.

Criticising the Centre for issuing the notices to several Durga Puja committees here, West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee had on Sunday announced that ‘Banga Janani Brigade’ – the women’s wing of the party – would sit on a dharna at Subodh Mullick Square on Tuesday.

Noting that festivals should be exempt from levies, she had urged organisers, participants and all people “who love Bangla” to join the protest.

The BJP had on Monday criticised the TMC’s decision to stage the demonstration, accusing a section of ruling TMC leaders of laundering money allegedly looted in chit fund scams through the puja committees.

The TMC had termed the allegations as “baseless”.

While two men have been arrested, a lady named Ritu has also been put behind bars for conspiring against the girl.

GURUGRAM: A 14-year-old girl from Meghalaya was allegedly raped by a group of men in Haryana’s Gurugram, after she arrived in the city on August 3.

The police on Friday arrested two men for raping the teen and a woman for conspiring against her. “The girl was raped at Rajendra Park by the men a few days back. We have arrested two men named- Bhupinder and Om Prakash. A lady named Ritu has also been put behind bars for conspiring against the girl. The victim was offered a beer and upon drinking it, passed out, following which she was raped,” said Shamsher Singh, ASP Crime, Gurugram while speaking to ANI.

A case under POCSO of the Indian Penal Code has been registered against the accused and thorough investigation into the matter is underway.