Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to consider opening a route to the Sharda Peeth pilgrimage site in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, PTI reported. In a letter to Modi, the Peoples Democratic Party leader said the abandoned temple was an important place of pilgrimage for the Pandit community before Independence.

Mufti’s letter came days after India and Pakistan agreed to develop a corridor to connect Dera Baba Nanak in India’s Punjab with the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur area of Pakistan’s Narowal district, where the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, died in 1539. India laid the foundation stone for the construction of the corridor on November 26, followed by Pakistan two days later.

On Thursday, Mufti had said the Kartarpur corridor project could be the beginning of reconciliation between India and Pakistan, and proposed that the two neighbours should now focus on facilitating the pilgrimage to Sharda Peeth. She had met Modi in April too with a similar request to develop Sharda Peeth on par with other ancient centres of learning such as Nalanda and Takshila.

In her letter on Saturday, Mufti said Sharda Peeth is an “outstanding relic of Kashmir’s glowing history”. “The initiatives taken by government of India under your distinguished predecessors in office have resulted in the opening of Muzaffarabad and Rawalkot routes,” she wrote. “Though their full potential has yet to be realised, the opening of Kartarpur has presented as with another window of opportunity.”

People-to-people contact between India and Pakistan is an important confidence-building measure, she said. Mufti said opening a route to Sharda Peeth would “fit very well in the vision of pulling Jammu and Kashmir out of its miseries through diplomatic and political means away from death and destruction we witness with unending regularity”.

“Kartarpur has encouraged the Pandit community to see a possibility of the pilgrimage to Shardapeeth in the same spirit and our belief is strengthened by the reported offer of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to allow it along with pilgrimage to Katas Raj,” Mufti said, adding that some members of the community had urged her to take up the matter with Modi.

On Thursday, Imran Khan had expressed willingness to open more religious routes for Hindu pilgrims, including the Sharda Peeth.