New Delhi: Concerned over the plight of displaced Kashmiri Pandits, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has requested Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani to provide assistance to Jammu and Kashmir government for its plan to rehabilitate them.

In a letter to Advani on September 8, which was released to the media on September 11, Gandhi said a delegation from the Hindu Welfare Society (HWF) recently gave her a petition regarding the problems faced by the community living in Jammu and Kashmir who have been demanding their rehabilitation, both physically and financially.

"It is worthwhile to look to their modest and entirely feasible demands," Gandhi wrote to Advani.

"The state government may need some assistance from the Centre to meet these demands speedily. I have already asked the Chief Minister to prepare a comprehensive package and send a formal proposal to the government of India for assistance for certain specific items," she said in the letter.

The displaced Pandits have been demanding resettling 10 to 15 pandit families in clusters that are fully integrated with a wider Muslim neighbourhood, employment for about 300 educated unemployed Kashmiri Pandit youth and relaxation of age bar for them, providing cash relief to needy families and rehabilitation of 70 families that were displaced within the valley due to militancy in 1998, she said.

The leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha said 95 per cent of the Kashmiri Pandit population are said to have moved to Jammu and Delhi during the last 13 years of militancy. "Today, I am told, there are just 8,865 pandits left in Kashmir in 270 villages."

They have been somehow persuaded to stay on in Kashmir by their Muslim brethren and organisations like HWS even after the Nadimarg massacre in March 2003, on the assurance that their demand would be met.

PTI