J&K: As credentials of PM Package employees goes public, time to look at the rot in the system

The threat has been issued by The Kashmir Fight blog, a mouthpiece of The Resistance Front, to 57 Kashmiri Pandit employees working as teachers under the Prime Minister's Rehabilitation Package (PMRP) in the Valley.

New Delhi, Dec 05: Fear has gripped Jammu and Kashmir and this time after the release of the credentials of those part of the PM Package Employees serving in Kashmir. The list was put out by Kashmir Fight which has put out several such hit-lists in recent times.

The list also comes at a time when the migrant Kashmiri Pandits are holding protests seeking relocation from Kashmir to Jammu citing security reasons. The Pandits have everything to fear following the targeted killings of their people.

When Rahul Bhat was killed, the government had constituted a Special Investigation Team, but the report is still awaited.

The list:

The Kashmir Fight blog is a mouthpiece of the The Resistence Front, which is a derivative of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba. The threat has been issued to 57 Kashmiri Pandit employees working as teachers under the Prime Minister's Rehabilitation Package (PMRP) in the Valley.

The threat has set panic among the 6,000 Kashmiri Pandit employees who are serving in various government departments in the Valley at present. The Pandits have demanded a high-level inquiry into how the list was leaked to the terror outfit.

The BJP too has demanded a probe into the leak of the list which was circulated on the social media after being published on the blog.

Hit-list of pro-Indian journalists:

In November, fear gripped the pro-Indian journalist community after the The Resistence Front put out a list of 76 names. The outfit claimed that these journalists are paid agents and collaborators of the Indian Police and Intelligence agencies. Out of the 76 names, 32 are of journalists based out of Srinagar.

The outfit also went on to label these journalists as traitors, agents, stooges and collaborators of the Indian police and agencies. In the last 33 years, there have been 20 fatal attacks on journalists by terrorists. Ironically the otherwise very vocal Editors Guild of India, Press Club of India, Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Sans Frontiers have been absolutely silent about this list.

A similar list was also put up two years back and it is claimed that the same was prepared by one Mukhtar Baba of Srinagar. He is an operative of the terror group Hizbullah who was arrested in the 1990s and released later. Baba then moved out of Jammu and Kashmir and settled down in Turkey. He is said to have received this list through his source in Srinagar, the investigations learnt.

The rot:

Post the abrogation of Article 370, the administration has been weeding out a lot of rot from within the system. Government employees on the payrolls of Pakistan funded terror groups have been identified and weeded out.

An official, who wished not to be named, told OneIndia that such lists are able to be prepared since there is a lot of rot left within the system. It is these employees who leak such lists to these terror groups. Such a list causes panic and this is what these groups want to achieve. At least 5 journalists who have been named in such lists have resigned.

The administration of the Union Territory has had its hands full in identifying the rot within. Action has been taken in recent times against government employees, government school teachers and those part of the jail establishment under the provision 311(2)(C) of the Constitution. The official said that these employees had been given jobs by the earlier dispensations.

Such persons have privy to a lot of information and they often tend to leak out such lists to these terror groups who have been wanting only the Muslims to stay back in Jammu and Kashmir. It is not new for these groups to keep the Kashmir Pandits under fear.

There has been an increase in the number of targeted killings of those who are pro-India and are working within the establishment. The number of such killings has also increased among the Pandits and the non-Muslim migrant workers. Such lists are only aimed at creating panic so that the Pandits leave the Valley, the official also explained.