This article goes into how efforts to help kashmir pandits (hindus) reclaim thier land are going on the ground. Despite everything that was sadi about them not much in all honesty. the portal for it is in bad shape and very little has been done in the past 35 years to assist them. attempts to take back their stolen land often end with violence, stonewalling and bureaucratic hoops. it talks about their desire to go back to thier homes. its a good article that I highly recommend reading
Posted by ewatta200
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**Jammu:** At the Relief Commissioner’s office in Jammu, the 55-year-old man rose quickly when a clerk called out, “Sunil Sadhoo from Bandipora.” He had been waiting for six hours. And over three decades. He clutched a pale, crumpled land deed, frayed thin at the edges after being carried from one office to another in Jammu & Kashmir for the last 35 years.
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“These papers are the only evidence left that I once lived in Kashmir. They are worn-out and tired, just like my fight to get my land back,” he said, looking at the documents fondly.
For Sadhoo and the other Kashmiri Pandits gathered in the heat, the Friday afternoon in April was different. This time, the administration had come to them.
For the first time in 35 years of displacement, additional district commissioners (ADCs) from their home districts in the Valley had arrived in Jammu to hear grievances directly. It reawakened a fragile hope: the possibility of finally reclaiming their homes and land. The last such wave of hope came in 2021, when the Narendra Modi government launched a grievance portal, only for many complaints to run into dead ends.
A claimant at the outreach camp shows a printout of a “resolved” claim he disputes | Photo: Mahira Khan | ThePrint
On 28 March, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah [told the assembly](https://kashmirobserver.net/2026/03/28/3729-kanals-of-kp-land-retrieved-in-valley-cm/) that the portal had received 10,173 applications so far, of which 9,713 had been “disposed of”, 7,829 approved, and just 24 were pending. But for many of the Pandits and Sikhs who fled the Valley overnight in 1990, this ‘success story’ narrative doesn’t align with their experiences. Most of the 30-odd people in the Relief Commissioner’s office, including Sadhoo, showed screenshots of their complaints on the portal marked as resolved, and alleged their cases had not actually been settled.
When Sadhoo and his family fled Bandipora in 1990, they left behind five kanals of land. Part of it is now occupied by the Army—“no rent for 13 years”—but the other part stings more.
“It is encroached by a Kashmiri Muslim,” he said. “The one who was once my farm labourer.”
Nature has reclaimed this Kashmiri Pandit house in Shopian, Kashmir | Photo: Mahira Khan | ThePrint
The new “regular outreach camps” were announced in a 5 March public notice. It followed a 15 January decision by the J&K government to form an Oversight Steering Committee to monitor complaints of encroachment on Kashmiri Pandit properties, “analyse the quality of disposal of complaints”, and track the progress of investigations by the police. The district-wise schedule of hearings began on 1 April with Srinagar and then on to other districts such as Pulwama, Budgam, and Ganderbal.
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On 10 April, it was Bandipora district’s turn. The claimants crowded the courtyard, holding papers close to their chests. “When is my number coming? I have been waiting for six hours in this heat,” one man shouted, while a lone clerk sifted through files. A total of [47,466 migrant families](https://www.mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/2026-02/reliefrehabilitationKM_26022026.pdf) are presently registered with the office of the Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner in Jammu.
Once again, patience and resignation have given way to urgency with this new chance to be heard. Their dream of getting back their land and orchards is not one they can abandon despite decades of disappointment—from the 1997 Migrant Property Act that left their homes in the hands of official custodians, to the Rs 1,600 crore rehabilitation package of 2009, to the 2021 grievance portal.
“Even today, we haven’t even been accorded the status of internally displaced persons, as if we left out of our own volition. Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits died with longing in their hearts to go back to their homes and live and die there. They didn’t want to die anywhere else,” said author and filmmaker Siddhartha Gigoo, whose work includes the short film *The Last Day* about the Kashmiri Pandits’ exile.
“In 2019, the Government of India announced setting up of a committee to survey and reopen around 50,000 temples that were closed in Kashmir ever since the armed insurgency erupted in 1990. What about tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandit houses?”