Govt approves Rs 5.5 lakh resettlement package for 5,300 displaced families

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a one-time payment of Rs 5.5 lakh each to 5,300 displaced families, which had come from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and initially settled outside Jammu and Kashmir, but later relocated to the state. 

The announcement of the resettlement package comes with polling to take place for block development councils (BDC) in J&K on October 24. The Congress announced in Jammu that it will boycott the polls. 

Announcing Cabinet decisions in the national capital, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said a “historical wrong” has been corrected. On November 30, 2016, the Union Cabinet had approved the rehabilitation package for those PoK families who had settled in J&K after partition under the PM’s development package 2015 for J&K. 

Javadekar said families, which had come from PoK but had settled outside J&K were left out of the package then, but have now been included.

In a Cabinet release, the government said in the wake of the1947 Pakistani aggression in J&K, 31,619 families migrated from PoK to the state of J&K. Of these, 26,319 families settled in J&K and 5,300 families initially opted to move out of the state of J&K to other parts of the country.

It stated, “Further, during the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971, 10,065 more families were displaced from Chhamb Niabat area. Of these 3,500 families were displaced during the 1965 war and 6,565 families were displaced during the 1971 war. 

Meanwhile, Congress state unit chief G A Mir, released recently from house arrest, said his party’s boycott of the block development council polls was to protest the “indifferent attitude of the state administration and continued detention of senior party leaders in the valley.” He said the state administration deliberately created hurdles for mainstream parties in order to facilitate the win of the BJP.