In a bid to streamline the career progression of Kashmiri Pandit employees engaged under the Prime Minister’s Development Package, the Administrative Council (AC) which met on Wednesday in Srinagar under the chairmanship of Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, approved the scheme for their promotion. This will remove the bottleneck in the career progression of employees appointed under the PM package.

Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar, Advisor to the Lt Governor, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta, Chief Secretary, J&K, and Nitishwar Kumar, Principal Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor attended the meeting.

The scheme envisages maintaining separate seniority for Kashmiri Migrant employees appointed under the PM package, by respective appointing departments which will run parallel to the seniority of regular employees and will take effect from the date of appointment against the supernumerary posts under the PM Package.

Accordingly, the Administrative Council sanctioned the creation of pre-facto supernumerary posts at corresponding higher levels to pave way for timely career progression of Kashmiri Migrant employees, by reducing the supernumerary posts at lower levels in the same ratio.

However, these promotions will be based on seniority and eligibility requirements as per the recruitment rules.

Further, for maintaining the spirit of the PM Package, all posts under the PM Package have been re-designated as divisional level posts in Kashmir Division. The new structure will provide avenues for in-situ promotion to all PM Package employees as per eligibility and seniority.

Implementation of the scheme will be monitored at the highest level to ensure that the eligible employees avail the benefits of the scheme at the earliest.

Pertinently, during the financial year 2008-09, Prime Minister’s Package was rolled out for the return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Migrants to the Kashmir valley which included various incentives like Housing, Employment, Transit Accommodations, etc. The employment component of the package extended employment to 6000 eligible candidates by creating various supernumerary posts in different departments.