Srinagar: Former Chief Minister and PDP President Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday said the welfare measures for Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) were taken during the tenure of the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.
She was talking to reporters here. “It was Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister who made the PM’s employment package for Kashmiri Pandits. If anything was done for the Kashmiri Pandits, like their shifting from tents to flats, it was done in Manmohan Singh’s tenure, and when Mufti (Mohammad Sayeed) sahib and (Ghulam Nabi) Azad sahib or Omar (Abdullah) sahib were here chief ministers,”said Mehbooba.
She added that the transit accommodations were also done under those governments. He asked what has the BJP done for KPs. “They have been directly ruling Kashmir for the last four years, tell me one thing they have done for the Kashmiri pandits?” she asked.
“During my tenure as Chief Minister, the government paid salaries to Kashmiri Pandit employees even as they stayed at home due to unrest in Kashmir. When the situation was bad in 2016, we gave the Kashmiri pandits salaries for 17 months while they were staying home,” the PDP President said.