No Kashmiri Pandit migrated valley post abrogation of Article 370: Centre

NEW DELHI: The home ministry on Wednesday told Rajya Sabha that no Kashmiri Pandit had migrated from the Valley between the nullification of Article 370 on August 5, 2019 till July 9, 2022, as per the records.
This reply by MoS (Home) Nityanand Rai runs contrary to some reports in May-June this year, suggesting that the series of killings of civilians, including a Kashmiri Pandit, in May had triggered an exodus of the Kashmir Pandits from the Valley.
According to Rai, 21 persons from various minorities in J&K, including 5 Kashmiri Pandits and 16 from other Hindu/Sikh communities, were killed by the terrorists between August 5 2019 till July 9, 2022. Overall, 118 civilians and 128 security force personnel were killed during this period. In the last two few months, two attacks were reported against Kashmiri Pandits, in which one person was killed and another person injured. A total 7 civilians were killed by terrorists in J&K this year till June, against 12 in 2021.
MoS (Home) Nityanand Rai said that 5502 Kashmiri pandits had been provided government jobs in different departments of the J&K government in the Valley.
In reply to a related question, Rai said that the government of India had approved the construction of 6,000 transit accommodations for Kashmiri migrant employees engaged or to be engaged in different districts of Kashmir under Prime Minister’s Development Package, 2015 (PMDP-2015) announced on 7.11.2015. Of this, the construction of 1025 units has been completed/substantially completed, 1872 units are at different stages of completion and work on remaining units has been taken up.
The government said it has taken several measures to ensure safety of minorities in the valley, including robust security and intelligence grid, day & night area domination, patrolling and proactive operations against terrorists, round-the-clock checking at Nakas, and deployment of road opening parties at strategic points.