Centre ready to create appropriate environment for return of PoK Kashmiri youths: PM

On Board Air India One, March 1 (ANI): Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Monday said the Centre would create an appropriate environment for Kashmiri youths wanting to comeback from Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK).

Interacting with the media on board Air India One, Dr. Singh said: "Any misguided young people if they want to come back to the part of rectitude we have to provide them an environment."

The Prime Minister also said that the government would have to keep an eye on such created facilities, so that people with strong violent ideology should not misuse them.

"At the same time one also has to recognise that the creation of these facilities also can be misused by strong terrorist ideologically motivated people," Dr. Singh said.

"So our task is to find practical ways and means to encourage those misguided people who had a change of heart come back," he added.

Dr. Singh also assured that the government would create every facility to "enable them (returned youths) to lead a life of dignity and self respect."

Last month, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram had expressed the Centre's readiness to facilitate return of all Kashmiri youths who had gone to PoK and wish to come back denouncing militancy and said all of them are welcome.

"Those Indians who had crossed over to PoK and now wish to return to India are certainly welcome," Chidambaram had said.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had also made a similar proposal and asked the Centre to formulate a new surrender and rehabilitation policy.

"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," Abdullah had said.

The formulation of the surrender policy for nearly 800 youths willing to return from PoK and join the mainstream came after the Centre received several feelers about their pathetic condition. y Naveen Kapoor (ANI)