Cabinet approves more jobs for Kashmiri migrants

The union cabinet today approved 3,000 Jammu and Kashmir state government jobs for Kashmiri migrants, particularly the Kashmiri Pandit community. The Centre will bear the financial cost. The Kashmiri migrants, to whom state government jobs are provided, will also be given transit accommodations in the Valley. The provision of jobs will cost the exchequer Rs 1,080 crore while Rs 920 crore will be spent on provision of accommodation -- Rs 200 crore on purchasing of land and Rs 720 crore on construction.

Over 62,000 Kashmiri Pandit migrants families are registered with the government, out of which 39,000 stay in Jammu, 19,000 in Delhi and remaining in other parts of the country. A government release said, Kashmiri Pandit community, along with some Sikh and Muslim families from the Kashmir Valley, had to migrate because of militancy and terrorist violence.

Rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandit families was one of the tenets of the common minimum programme of the Bharatiya Janata Party - Peoples Democratic Party coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir.

In 2008, a package of Rs 1618.40 crore was announced to facilitate the return of the migrants to the Kashmir Valley. Under this package, 3000 state government jobs were to be provided to the Kashmiri migrants with central funding, of whom 1963 jobs have already been provided and process for the rest was underway.

Nearly 470 transit accommodations have been constructed in the Kashmir Valley which have been allotted to the newly appointed migrant employees on sharing basis.

The Cabinet meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also cleared a proposal for raising monetary assistance by more than 400 per cent for migrants from hilly areas of Jammu region to make it at par with Kashmiri migrants. Now, 1,054 families would receive assistance of Rs 2,500 per person from the existing Rs 400, costing the exchequer Rs 13.45 crore per annum. However, there will be a ceiling of Rs 10,000 per family, which is also applicable to Kashmiri Pandit migrants.

The PM had announced a Rs 80,000 crore economic package for the state on November 7.

CCTNS to be fast-tracked

Days after terror attacks in Paris, the government today gave its nod for the time-bound completion of a project to synchronise databases of security organisations across the country after its integration with key components of the criminal justice system. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network Systems (CCTNS), an ambitious project conceived by the previous UPA government, by March 2017. The total outlay for the project is Rs 2,000 crore.