NEW DELHI: The home ministry has readied a blueprint for return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits in the Kashmir Valley that envisages 3,000 government jobs and 6,000 new flats as transit accommodation along with a longterm plan of constructing two-three composite townships for the KPs.
The ministry is moving a Cabinet note in respect of the plan which will cost Rs 2,000 crore, a senior government official told ET. “We believe that if offered government jobs, Kashmiri Pandits will be willing to return to the Valley. We have a small transit accommodation of 200 flats in Sheikhpura, Budgam in the Valley. The plan is now to construct 6,000 flats in the Valley as transit accommodation for Pandits to return to the Valley,” the official said.
J&K government has already promised to provide land for the proposed flats, the official said. In addition, he said, 3,000 new government jobs will be offered to the Kashmiri Pandits who return to the Valley. These jobs will be in addition to the 3,000-odd jobs already offered to the Pandits under the erstwhile UPA government’s 2004 package of Rs 1,618 crore and 5,242 two-room tenements constructed in Jammu and allotted to the migrants.
“About 2,000 migrants have taken up existing jobs till now,” the official said. The 3,000 new flats to be built in the Valley will not be on twin-sharing basis as earlier so as “to enable migrants to move back with their families”, he said. The MHA is also working on a Phase-II plan which involves permanent rehabilitation of Pandits in two-three composite townships of 2,500 families each to be built near Srinagar and Anantnag.
