Pandit or Sainik colonies is not being considered by the government of India. This was stated by the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Hansraj Gangaram Ahir in a written reply to question by Ashwini Kumar in the Lok Sabha yesterday.
He said that the government has no proposal to set up Sainik and Pandit colonies in the State of Jammu and Kashmir.
How will the Kashmiri Pandit community get rehabilitated and when?
But he added that the Government has approved a scheme on 18th November 2015 for providing additional 3000 state government jobs to the Kashmiri migrants and construction of 6000 transit accommodations in the Kashmir valley for the Kashmiri migrants to whom state government jobs have been provided/ will be provided.
As per the news agency PTI, total 62,000 Kashmiri Pandit families are registered as migrants of which 40,000 are in Jammu, 20,000 in Delhi and two thousand in rest of the country.
There was communal tension in Kashmir after separatists made an issue over the Kashmiri Pandit colonies and the Sainik colonies fearing that the Islamic character of the state may get altered due to this.
The separatists and Islamists in the state have also worked against the grant of citizenship to West Pakistan refugees after which an uproar took place prompting Mehbooba Mufti to issue a clarification on the same.
Kashmiri Pandit community is demanding that they be rehabilitated in Jammu and Kashmir but it seems that they will have to wait.
