Youths Willing to Return from PoK Are Welcome: Chidambaram
The union government has expressed its willingness to facilitate return of all Kashmiri youths who had gone to Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) and now want to come back quitting terrorism, saying all of them are welcome, reported PTI.
“Those Indians who had crossed over to PoK and now wish to return to India are certainly welcome,” home minister P Chidambaram was quoted as saying while talking to reporters in New Delhi.
His statement was in response to a proposal put forth by Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah that the Centre should formulate a new surrender and rehabilitation policy for such youths.
Abdullah had said, “To encourage more militants to return to the state and manage their transition to civilian life, a new surrender and rehabilitation policy of militants is under active consideration of my government.”
In the wake of a Union Cabinet meeting, Chidambaram said, “PoK is actually an Indian territory and we should facilitate their return.”
After Omar’s statement at the conference of Chief Ministers on Internal Security in New Delhi on Sunday, the Centre was contemplating formulating the new rehabilitation policy in consultation with the state government which may include a general amnesty.
The formulation of the surrender policy for nearly 800 youths willing to return from PoK and join the mainstream came after several feelers were received by the state government about their pathetic condition.
