The controversy over township for displaced Kashmiri Pandit community refused to die down with Deputy Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Nirmal Singh on Friday saying that the Government will go ahead with the plan.
"Definitely we will go ahead with it (resettlement proposal). They (Kashmiri Pandits) will go back... Stay there, go there live there take back what rightfully belongs to them," Singh said here.
He said that if "Gujjar colony" and other colonies can come up in Jammu then why there was a problem in setting up a "colony" for the displaced community in the Kashmir Valley. "If Gujjar colony can come up in Jammu, if Sainik colony can come up here, several other colonies too have come up here as well as there (in Kashmir), then why not a colony for them (Kashmiri Pandits)," he asked. On April 8, the State Government had denied any such move, saying that there will be no isolated settlements. "It's clear that the Kashmiri pandits are a part and parcel of the traditional Kashmiri ethos and they would be reintegrated into their native place as a part of the society and not as an isolated community," a state government spokesman had said in a release.