By IANS,
Jammu : Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday inaugurated a township near this Jammu and Kashmir winter capital for hindu families who fled the Kashmir Valley due to terrorism.
Singh inaugurated the first phase of the township having 800 flats at Jagti.
The township, to be spread over 100 acres, will cost Rs.385 crore and will have 4,218 flats, hospital, schools, play fields and round-the-clock water and power supply.
The prime minister said the township will improve the living standards of the migrants.
Nearly 350,000 Kashmiri Pandits, as the hindu migrants are known, fled the valley in the early 1990s due to a terror campaign unleashed by separatist militants. Many of them have been living in congested migrant camps near Jammu.
The township for Kashmiri Pandits has evoked envy and resentment among other groups of refugees, particularly the ones from Pakistan-Administered Kashmir.
“It’s sheer discrimination by the government of India. We have been living in slums for the past 63 years, and no one has taken care of us. Kashmiri migrants are being provided with ultra-modern homes and free rations,” said Rajiv Chuni, president of SOS International, an organization of the people who were affected by the invasion of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 and had to leave their homes on the Pakistani side of Kashmir.