73 percent drop in martyrdom of jawans post August 5: MHA

Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Feb 5: The Union Ministry of Home Affairs today said martyrdom of security personnel has witnessed 73 percent drop in Jammu and Kashmir post abrogation of special Constitutional provisions of the erstwhile State and bifurcation of J&K into two Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh.
In a Sajjad reply in Rajya Sabha, Union Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy said that incidents of martyrdom of security personnel have come down by 73 percent in Jammu and Kashmir since August 5 when Articles 370 and 35-A were abrogated and the erstwhile State was reorganized.
“While 82 security personnel were martyred during 173 days from February 13, 2019 to August 4, 2019, only 22 jawans attained martyrdom in 173 days from August 5, 2019 to January 24, 2020,” Reddy said.
Giving a written reply to another related question regarding compensation to the kin of civilians killed in militant attacks, Reddy said that Government of Jammu and Kashmir has reported that since 5th August 2019, 32 militants have been killed, 10 others arrested and 19 civilians have lost their lives in militant attacks or during action against ultras.
An ex-gratia of Rs.1 lakh is being paid to the next of kin of civilians killed in militancy related violence under the existing scheme of Government of Jammu and Kashmir.
In addition, Rs 5 lakhs are given under the scheme Central Scheme for Assistance to Civilian Victims/Family of Victims of Terrorist /Communal/ LWE Violence and Cross Border Firing and Mine/IED Blasts on Indian Territory, Reddy stated.
Meanwhile, nearly 3.94 lakh cyber security incidents were reported in 2019 as per information tracked by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), Parliament was informed today.
“Cyber space is a complex environment of people, software, hardware and services on the internet. Due to vulnerabilities in software, lack of awareness among people and evolving processes, there are possibilities of increased cyber security incidents,” Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Sanjay Dhotre said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.
According to the information reported to and tracked by CERT-In, 49,455 cyber security incidents were reported in 2015, 50,362 (in 2016), 53,117 (2017), 2,08,456 (2018) and 3,94,499 (2019), he added.
“In tune with the dynamic nature of information technology and emerging cyber threats, continuous efforts are required to be made by owners to protect networks by way of hardening and deploying appropriate security controls,” he said adding that the Government has taken a slew of measures to enhance the cyber security safeguards and prevent cyber attacks.
Measures include audit of Government websites and applications, formulation of a crisis management plan for countering cyber attacks, and the launch of botnet cleaning and malware analysis centre ‘Cyber Swachhta Kendra’.
To another question, Dhotre said that as per the information tracked by CERT-In, 54 websites of Central Ministries, departments and State Governments were hacked in 2019, against 110 sites in 2018.

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