By Jehangir Ali
Srinagar: A proposal to provide ‘land to landless’ people has triggered a controversy in Jammu and Kashmir, with two former chief ministers accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government of attempting to change the demography of the union territory.
While Mehbooba Mufti, who is also the president of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), alleged that the Union government was planning to settle 10 lakh migrants in J&K as its vote bank, Omar Abdullah, the working president of the National Conference, demanded that the government must “come clean”.
The remarks by the former chief ministers came days after J&K’s lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha announced on Monday, July 3, that the administration had cleared a proposal on June 21 to provide five marlas (126 sq m) land to each landless family in J&K.
Officials said that 2.57 lakh houseless families were identified in J&K through the 2011 Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) which was carried out under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Grameen) (PMAY-G), a social welfare scheme rolled out by the Government of India in 2016.
“136152 cases were sanctioned for J&K … by 2022,” an official spokesperson said in a statement.
A second survey was carried out between January 2018 and March 2019 to identify beneficiaries who claimed to have been left out under the 2011 SECC. “The data of beneficiaries …was utilized to fill the gaps between overall target and eligible beneficiaries made available from SECC Permanent Wait List (PWL),” the statement said…
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here