After facing backlash over his remarks on ‘The Kashmir Files’ in the Delhi assembly, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said that his speech has been “presented in a wrong way”. In an interview with Times Now Navbharat, the national convener of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said all he had demanded was that everyone should rise above the party line and work for the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley.
Calling the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits a “huge tragedy” and “injustice”, Kejriwal told the interviewer that a sensitive government should have given land to Kashmiri Pandits for their resettlement and formed a policy towards it.
“For BJP, The Kashmir Files is important. For me, Kashmiri Pandits are more important. When Pandits migrated from Kashmir, 233 Pandits had joined the Delhi government as contract teachers in 1993. When our government came, we made all of them permanent. We didn’t make a film on them,” Kejriwal added.
On Thursday, the Delhi chief minister had targeted the BJP leaders for promoting the film and criticised the move of making it tax-free. He, then, went on to suggest that the filmmaker, Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, should upload The Kashmir Files on YouTube for all to see free of cost.
Posting a picture showing Kejriwal and other AAP MLAs laughing in the Delhi Assembly, BJP general secretary B L Santhosh had tweeted: “Never forget.”
“They are laughing (at) people who lost their lives in J&K due to terrorism, laughing at mothers who lost their children, children who lost their parents, security forces who were killed, women who were butchered, children who were shot at… Shameless anarchists.”
During the post-budget press conference on Saturday, Kejriwal said “the BJP is doing politics over the issue. We demand ‘The Kashmir Files’ film be uploaded on YouTube so that the entire country can understand the plight of Kashmiri Pandits. The money earned from it should be spent on the welfare of Kashmiri Pandits.”