J&K govt requested for identifying land in Valley for Kashmiri Pandits

New Delhi

The Jammu and Kashmir government has been requested for identifying suitable land in the Kashmir Valley where Kashmiri migrants could be rehabilitated, Lok Sabha was informed today.

Further action would be taken once the land is identified, Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said in a written reply.

There are about 62,000 registered Kashmiri migrant families in the country, who migrated from the Valley due to the onset of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir in the early 1990s.

About 40,000 registered Kashmiri migrant families are living in Jammu, about 20,000 in Delhi-NCR and about 2,000 families are settled in other parts of the country.

Chaudhary said the government, on November 18 last year, approved a rehabilitation package involving an estimated expenditure of Rs 2,000 crore for providing additional 3,000 state government jobs to the Kashmiri migrants and construction of 6,000 transit accommodation in the Kashmir valley for the Kashmiri migrants to whom state government jobs have been provided or will be provided.

The state government has been requested to take necessary action for the implementation of the package at the earliest, he said.

PTI