New Delhi, July 6: Home Minister P Chidambaram Wednesday said there were “practical issues” in implementing Jammu and Kashmir government’s rehabilitation policy for militants who have crossed over to Pakistan administered Kashmir (PaK).
“The government of Jammu and Kashmir has identified a certain number of people who can be brought back to India under the rehabilitation scheme. But there are number of practical issues that have to be resolved,” Chidambaram said in his monthly press briefing.
He said there were “very many practical issues” that have to be resolved.
“After discussing with the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, I have asked the Home Ministry and External Affairs Ministry to sit together to resolve the practical aspects of physically bringing them (militants) to our side of the LoC and rehabilitating them,” he said. A high level committee comprising representatives of JK government, MHA, Army and others had scrutinised the applications of militants who wanted to return. After verifying the antecedents of the militants who want to surrender and live a peaceful life, it cleared 28 names of nearly 700 application received by it.
The issue of return of Kashmiri youth from PaK shot to prominence in 2006 when a delegation of leaders from JK, including Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, went to Pakistan, where these youth asked them to facilitate their return.
On the reports suggesting that thousands of militants are waiting to cross over the Line of Control, Chidambaram said these were “highly exaggerated” claims.
“To the best of my assessment it’s an exaggerated claim. We know that there are certain number of people from the other side of border or LoC who are ready to infiltrate but I think that is a much smaller number,” he said.
The Home Minister said, “I don’t think that this report is correct that several thousand people have been trained to infiltrate. I think this is a highly exaggerated report whatever we know whatever we assess the armed forces, the paramilitary forces and the JK police are fully competent to deal with infiltration. They are in fact dealing with infiltration”.
He said even on Monday an infiltration attempt was foiled and one attempted infiltrator was killed in Jammu and Kashmir.

Lastupdate on : Wed, 6 Jul 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 6 Jul 2011 18:30:00 GMT
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