Srinagar: The Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, on Tuesday said that “large scale” recruitment drive has been carried out after formation of the J&K as Union territory.
“The Government of Jammu and Kashmir, has carried out several governance reforms, including in the area of recruitments in Government,” Minister of State, MHA Nityanand Rai said in a written reply in Lok Sabha to a question whether after the revocation of Article 370, the Government had promised that the same will usher in a new dawn in the region and help in the development of the youth there and announced 50,000 jobs in various Government departments for Kashmiri locals.
“Large scale recruitment drive has been carried out after formation of the Union territory in the most transparent manner,” he said as per reply copy with GNS, adding, “33,426 vacancies of Gazetted/Non-Gazetted categories have been identified in the Government of Jammu and Kashmir, out of which 25,450 vacancies have been filled till December, 2022.”
He said recruiting agencies have also advertised 7,976 vacancies for recruitment. “The identification of vacancies in the Government and recruitment is a continuous and on-going process. The same is taken up under Accelerated Recruitment Drive.”
Rai said that the Government of Jammu and Kashmir has taken various initiatives to bring down un-employment by implementing various self employment schemes through different departments by providing subsidized loans for establishment of their own sustainable income generation units.
“A number of self employment schemes like Mission Youth, Rural Livelihood Mission, Himayat, PMEGP, Avsar, Tejaswani are being implemented for providing employment opportunities,” he said, adding, “During the current financial year, 2,01,299 employments have been generated upto 21.01.2023 through such schemes.”
To a question whether as per a report titled “Periodic Labour Force Survey April-June 2021” released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, unemployment figures among educated youth in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir has reached 46.3 per cent, second highest in the country and if so, the reasons therefor, Rai said: “From the results of Periodic Labor Force Survey (PLFS) conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), estimates of unemployment rate is not available specifically for the educated youth in Jammu and Kashmir for the period April-June 2021.”
However, he said, from the PLFS conducted by NSSO during July 2020-June 2021, estimate of unemployment rate according to usual status among the persons of age group 15-29 years for Jammu and Kashmir was 18.3 per cent.

KR Desk