SRINAGAR: Police fired tear gas on Friday to disperse hundreds of people demonstrating against a government plan to build townships for hundreds of thousands of Hindus in India-held Kashmir.

A photographer working with a local newspaper and a policeman were injured in the clashes as the protesters chanting pro-independence slogans marched towards the city centre, Lalchowk, in Srinagar.

As security personnel dispersed them, scores of youths regrouped and hurled rocks at them, a police officer said.

Clashes also erupted in least two other neighbourhoods in old quarters of Srinagar. The protesters oppose the government plan to build new townships in the disputed region for nearly 200,000 Hindus, known as Pandits, who reportedly migrated to areas in Jammu and parts of India in 1990.

Kashmiri leaders called the townships plan “a conspiracy to create settlements on religious lines” and called for protests after Friday prayers and a shutdown on Saturday.

Mohammed Yasin Malik, chairman of the pro-independence Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front, compared the proposed townships with Israeli-type settlements. He said such a step would only create hatred and disgust between Hindus and Muslims.

“We will not allow anybody to turn Kashmir into another Palestine. They (Pandits) are owners of this land as we are, and we welcome them to live in a composite society along with their Muslim brothers.”

Mr Malik and many other activists were detained while leading the protest demonstration.

Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, the top elected official of India-held Kashmir, sought to quell the controversy by saying that the Hindu migrants would be settled in places where they had lived before leaving and “there will be no Israel-type clusters”.

India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh met Mr Sayeed in New Delhi on Tuesday and asked him to provide land for townships for the migrants in the Kashmir valley.

On Thursday, Mr Singh said the plan was unchanged. “I don’t want to go into details. Whatever decision was taken by the central (federal) government for the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits... the decision remains the same,” he told reporters in New Delhi.

An estimated 68,000 people have died in the armed campaign against Indian rule in the disputed region.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2015

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