Protests over Hindu lands escalate in Kashmir

Critics say the protests are politically motivated ahead of state elections due later this year.

"Back to '90s," read a banner headline of Greater Kashmir, the region's leading English language newspaper, referring to mass protests in the early 1990s when tens of thousands took to streets across the region demanding Kashmir's cessation from India.

"The atmosphere is highly surcharged and there is hardly any way out in sight or any political solution available at hand to neutralise the situation," Rising Kashmir newspaper said in its editorial "Kashmir on fire."

The chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Ghulam Nabi Azad, promised that there would be no construction on the transferred land at the base camp of pilgrimage.

During the two-month-long pilgrimage, thousands of devout Hindus from across India walk and ride ponies to the cave, situated at an altitude of 3,800 metres, to pray by an ice stalagmite they believe to be a symbol of Hindu god Lord Shiva.

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