The Centre has told the Mehbooba Mufti led PDP government in Jammu and Kashmir, of which the BJP is a part, that it has no immediate plans to talk to the separatists in the valley or with Pakistan. Sources told The Sunday Guardian that the Centre has further apprised the state government that the peace-building process would be an internal exercise that would focus on withdrawal of criminal complaints against teenagers, generating employment for the youth, and the release of youths who have been incarcerated for stone pelting or other forms of protests.
Sources said that the Centre finalised this strategy, aimed at ending alienation, after receiving relevant inputs from the intelligence agencies. To wean away the youths from anti-state protests, the Centre has directed all recruiting agencies in J&K to fill up vacant posts within three months, a senior civil servant in the state government revealed to this newspaper.
“We have already completed the process of filling up 6,000 posts and by the end of December we expect to complete the process for 5,000 more posts,” the official quoted said. The state government is also screening the cases of first time offenders in stone-pelting incidents from 2015 till the third week of November 2017. The screening committees have been told to submit their recommendations within 10 days. However, it is not certain whether the government would act on the recommendations of the committee and withdraw cases against such offenders whom the committee says can be relieved. The Union Home Ministry has decided to focus on the state police and address their problems. Relief provided to J&K police personnel has been raised to Rs 10 lakh, at par with CRPF jawans. The compensation for SPOs, who are on the forefront in anti-militancy operations, has been raised to Rs 5lakh.