People’s Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti has said that the BJP has used the Kashmiri Pandit community's pain and suffering as a ‘weapon’ to garner votes across the country. She claimed that the BJP used their suffering to seek votes without doing anything for them.
Mehbooba Mufti was speaking after visiting the residence of Roshan Lal, a Kashmiri Pandit and a photojournalist who died last month, in the city's Abi Guzar area. She said the Pandit community does not have so many votes themselves but the BJP used their pain and suffering and went around seeking votes in their name, without doing anything for them. Mehbooba said since the BJP-led Centre began to directly administer Jammu and Kashmir, ‘even those Kashmiri Pandits who used to live here have left because the situation became such’.
The PDP chief said, ‘What is happening in the country -- the way people from our community are lynched, killed, beaten up, our mosques and madrassas demolished, homes are demolished. The people of our country, our Hindu brethren, are secular. They don't believe in this; this is a lesson for them that many Pandits live here in very difficult times and that Muslims and Hindus are ready to live here as they used to’. Speaking on the return of the Kashmiri Pandits to the Valley, Mehbooba said the community does not need the help of any government and added that the people of Kashmir want the Kashmiri Pandits to return.
Lt Governor Manoj Sinha and former chief minister Omar Abdullah also visited the family to pay their condolences.