The Srinagar Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (GPC) on Saturday said the members of the minority community will not attend to duties until the government assures them of security in Kashmir.
A sense of insecurity has gripped the minorities—Sikhs and Kashmiri Pandits—in Kashmir after four members belonging to these two communities were shot dead by militant group The Resistance Front (TRF) in two days.
On Tuesday, noted chemist M.L. Bindroo was shot dead at his shop at Iqbal Park while a street vendor from Bihar was shot dead at Lal Bazar in downtown Srinagar. He was selling bhelpuri.
On Thursday, a Sikh woman, who was the principal of a government higher secondary school in Eidgah, and her colleague Deepk Chand were shot by the TRF inside the school.
Kour was a resident of Allochi Bagh in Srinagar while Chand hailed from Jammu.
The killings sparked a wave of fear in Kashmir, forcing the government to ask Kashmiri Pandits to stay home for ten days. The decision was criticised because the Sikhs were excluded from the decision.
Addressing a press conference, Navtej Sigh, General Secretary, GPC, Srinagar, said that despite many inputs and incidents of attacks against the minorities in the past, the government didn’t provide any security to them.
“The government has failed to protect the minority community in Jammu and Kashmir,’’ he said. “ Unless the government assures protection, none of them will attend government duty.”
He said they demand that the government provide security for government employees of the minority community and assure them of their safety.
He said the majority community should come forward and condemn the attack on minorities.
“It would have been better if the majority community had participated in yesterday’s protest,” he said.
