Kashmiri pandits won’t be evicted from quarters
Giving a sigh of relief to Kashmiri pandits, who fled the Valley following outbreak of militancy, Justice Gita Mittal of the Delhi high court on Tuesday restrained the Centre from evicting these Kashmiri pandits from their government quarters here and directed it to provide them alternative residence in the capital after their retirement.
Justice Mittal observed that the right to shelter is a fundamental right and the displaced members of the community cannot be forced to evict as in the present situation they cannot go back to the Valley because of government’s failure to ensure their safety there.
Pulling up the government for threatening to forcibly evict the Kashmiri pandits, the HC directed the Centre to pay a cost of Rs 25,000 to each of the petitioners.
The court passed the order after hearing a bunch of petitions filed by 24 Central government employees, all Kashmiri pandits, who were working in Kashmir Valley but were transferred to the capital as the community was targeted by militants from 1989.
The petitioners sought a direction to restrain the Centre from evicting them from government quarters.
“The petitioners may be compelled to return to the violent situation where from they were forced to flee. Forcing the petitioners to return to the area where they were persecuted violates the principles of international law forbidding the expulsion of a refuse into an area where such person might be again subjected to persecution,” the court said.
It said the case is “testimony to events which lead to unprecedented ethnic cleansing of a minority community from the Kashmir Valley on account of inability of the state to protect them and their property from violence, who as a result, were rendered homeless.
“Such turmoil was faced by the minority community in the state of Jammie and Kashmir after December 1989,” the court said.
The court also made it clear that till the time the government is able to provide alternative accommodation, the petitioners shall be allowed to retain the allotted accommodation.
The court said that this judgement would be applicable in all such cases where the state has been unable to ensure safety and security of people, especially Kashmiri Pandits, in case they return to the place of their residence.
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‘Kanth hid vital info’
AGE CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi
Nov 30: Amicus curiae H.S. Phoolka on Tuesday told a single-judge bench of the Delhi high court that to secure the President’s Police Medal, former IPS officer Amod Kanth had allegedly concealed from the President that he had allowed wrong implication of 15 Sikhs in a case involving killings of two of their relatives in an anti-Sikh riot case.
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