JAMMU — Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Tuesday announced the formation of a committee to address the issue of regularisation of daily wagers in Jammu and Kashmir and said that a roadmap will be prepared for presentation in the next budget session before the House.
This announcement was made by the chief minister while replying to the motion of thanks on the budget address in the Assembly.
“We want to reassure the daily-rated workers, ad-hoc, and casual workers that we have not forgotten them. I am announcing the committee in front of the Assembly, headed by the Chief Secretary, and will be issuing the official order today after my budget speech,” Abdullah told the House.
He said that the committee will include the Additional Chief Secretary in the Chief Minister’s Office, along with the Secretaries of the Planning, GAD, and Law Departments as members, and it will be headed by the Chief Secretary.
“The committee will be given six months to thoroughly review the number of daily wagers through GAD and assess the legal and financial aspects of their regularisation,” he added.
He noted that the Law Department has a key role to play after the Supreme Court’s judgment on the issue. “They will be asked to prepare a framework within six months. They should fix the figures. After assessing all aspects, including legal and financial, they should prepare a roadmap on how to proceed, so that in the next budget session, I can stand before you and say, ‘This is what we are going to do,’” he said.
Earlier in the day, BJP members staged a walkout from the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly following a ruckus, as the saffron party and National Conference (NC) members engaged in verbal duels over widespread protests, cane charges, and detentions of daily wage employees from the Jal Shakti Department. The workers were demanding the release of their wages and regularization.
There are an estimated 67,000 daily wagers in various categories in Jammu.
Abdullah acknowledged the plight of daily wagers and ad-hoc workers, calling their struggle a “social and humanitarian issue” rather than just a financial matter for the government.
Responding to criticism in the Assembly, Abdullah admitted past failures in addressing their regularisation. “BJP member Balwant Singh Mankotia asked why the situation reached this point. I, too, wonder why things turned out this way for them. I admit that we did nothing, and that is precisely why we lost in 2014,” he said.
He mentioned that his government had taken steps to regularize these workers but could not complete the process. “We had finalised the procedure and numbers, but it could not happen. After that, when you came into power, what did you do?” he asked the opposition, BJP.
In a counterattack, Abdullah cited multiple budget speeches from the previous government (BJP-PDP) since 2015, arguing that they, too, had promised regularisation but failed to deliver. “They formulated an SRO for regularization at the fag end of the fourth budget. However, in four budget years, they managed to regularize only 570 out of approximately 61,000 such workers,” he said.
He further noted that after the fall of Mehbooba Mufti’s government, the SRO was scrapped under the J&K Reorganisation Act two years ago, closing the door for regularization. “Now, you ask why they came onto the streets? This was bound to happen because their path to regularisation was completely shut,” he said.
Declaring a fresh start, Abdullah announced, “We are starting from zero. There is neither an SRO nor any framework in place for it.” — (PTI)