The Union Ministry of Home Affairs on Wednesday said not a single Hindu or Kashmiri Pandit has been displaced from Jammu and Kashmir following the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019.
However, the Union Ministry did add that some government employees have moved from Kashmir to Jammu as a part of the movement of officials and the winter vacation in educational institutions.
After the repeal of Article 370, no Kashmiri Pandit/Hindu has been displaced from the Valley: Union Home Ministry tells Rajya Sabha pic.twitter.com/LTcd1GSLl5
— ANI (@ANI) December 8, 2021
“After the repeal of Article 370, no Kashmiri Pandit/Hindu has been displaced from the valley. However, recently some Kashmiri Pandit families, mostly women and children, living in Kashmir moved to the Jammu region. These families are of government employees, many of whom, move to Jammu in winter as a part of a movement of officials and the winter vacation in educational institutions,” the response by Union Home Ministry said.
The central government also said that a total of 366 terrorists were killed while 96 civilians and 81 security personnel lost their lives in Kashmir between August 5, 2019, and November 30, 2021.
The Ministry was responding to unstarred question no.1165 asked by Congress Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh. The former Madhya Pradesh chief minister had sought details of the number of Kashmiri Hindus and Kashmiri Pandits displaced in the Valley since August 5, 2019, and the number of terrorists killed, civilian deaths, and soldiers martyred in Kashmir after the revocation of Article 370.
On August 5, 2019, Union Home Minister Amit Shah moved a bill that effectively abolished Article 370 in the upper house of the Indian parliament. With President’s assent, Article 370, which granted a special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir was scrapped from the Indian constitution, and consequently, the state was divided into two Union territories—Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
