The Jammu & Kashmir administration has started posting Kashmiri Pandit teachers in government schools to “safer zones” in a bid to discourage their desire to leave the Kashmir valley following a string of targeted attacks by militants on members of the minority community that left nine people dead in the past one month.
Srinagar’s Chief Education Officer has posted 177 Pandit employees, recruited under the Prime Minister’s special employment package, to more secure zones in the city. Most of them have been posted in areas around the Army Cantonment such as Badamibagh, Batwara and Athwajan, or high security areas such as Jawahar Nagar, Rajbagh and Barzulla. Non-teaching Pandit staff have also been shifted to safer locations.
The government action, however, came in for criticism after the list of 177 teachers went viral on social media. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) objected to the transfer list of Kashmiri Pandit employees surfacing in the public domain. The party demanded action against the concerned officials.
