HC stays ordinance extending job benefits to non-migrant Pandits

SRINAGAR: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has stayed the operation of an ordinance issued by the state government wherein it had amended the Migrant Recruitment Rules of 2009 and extended special recruitment benefits under the Prime Minister’s Rehabilitation Package to the Kashmiri Pandit families which did not migrate from the Valley.

Ishfaq Tantry

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, December 16

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has stayed the operation of an ordinance issued by the state government wherein it had amended the Migrant Recruitment Rules of 2009 and extended special recruitment benefits under the Prime Minister’s Rehabilitation Package to the Kashmiri Pandit families which did not migrate from the Valley.

The special ordinance, issued in October this year by the government to carry out a special recruitment drive for the unemployed Pandit youth of the Valley, has been challenged by unemployed Sikh youth from Kashmir by filing a petition before the High Court, arguing that the Sikh community also deserves the benefits of the amendment.

“No appointment in terms of Sadr-e-Riyasat Ordinance (SRO-425) and government order No. 96 of November 13, 2017, shall be finalised and made,” a single bench of Justice Janak Raj Kotwal said in its orders made available today, while issuing a notice to the state government and seeking objections by or before the next date of hearing in the first week of February 2018.

By virtue of SRO-425, issued by the state government on October 10, 2017, the amendment has been effected to the Kashmir Migrants (Special Drive) Recruitment Rules of 2009, thus extending the benefits to a person who belongs to a Kashmiri Pandit family and has not migrated from Kashmir after November 1989 and is residing in the Valley.

Subsequently, the government wide an order No. 96 of November 13, 2017, had also constituted a committee for giving benefits of the employment package to the Pandit youth as per SRO-425.

As argued by the petitioners before the court through their lawyer advocate Zaffar Shah, the Rules of 2009 extended employment benefits to ‘migrant’ unemployed youth from the Kashmir valley against the posts specially created from time to time in Kashmir division under the Prime Minister’s special package for the return and rehabilitation of the Kashmiri migrants to the Valley.

As per the unamended rules, ‘migrants’ were defined as those who migrated from Kashmir after November 1, 1989, when militancy broke out in the Valley while ‘internally displaced persons’ were defined as those who had to migrate within the Valley due to security reasons.

“The benefit under Rule of 2009, as they originally were, was available to all migrants as defined, irrespective of cast, creed or religion. However, the benefit in terms of SRO-425 has been restricted to the members of a particular community who have not migrated from Kashmir,” the Sikh petitioners have argued before the High Court, adding that the said SRO offends Article 14 and 16 of the Constitution and the fundamental right of equality of unemployed educated youth of the Sikh community who had not left the Valley after 1989.

Sikhs demand benefits

The special ordinance, issued in October this year by the government to carry out a special recruitment drive for the unemployed Pandit youth of the Valley, has been challenged by unemployed Sikh youth from Kashmir by filing a petition before the J&K High Court, arguing that the Sikh community also deserves the benefits of the amendment