NEW DELHI, July 8: The All Parties Hurriyat Conference kicked off a mass contact programme in Jammu and Kashmir on Friday and said it planned to bring back the region’s alienated Hindu citizens.

“We started a mass contact programme today to firmly establish our claim as the true representatives of Jammu and Kashmir,” Mirwaiz Maulvi Umar Farooq told Dawn from Srinagar.

He said the APHC had summoned a meeting with the region’s Hindu leaders on July 19 to start the process of bringing them home from refugee colonies. The meeting in Charar-i-Sharief was widely acclaimed as it symbolised Kashmir’s syncretic culture, he said. About 10,000 people attended the meeting. A larger meeting would be held on Saturday, he said.