Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, May 22: Jammu Kashmir Sharnarthi Action Committee (JKSAC) has urged Union Home Minister Amit Shah to extend the deadline of the Prime Minister’s relief package for Displaced Persons (DPs) from Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) by another year as nearly 4,000 refugee families continue to suffer due to bureaucratic hurdles and missing Government records.
The organisation stated that although the deadline for the Rs 5.5 lakh ex-gratia relief package expired on March 31, 2026, thousands of deserving families from POJK have still not been able to apply because they are unable to produce certain mandatory documents prescribed under Government Order No. 22-JK (DMRRR) dated March 27, 2017.
JKSAC President Gurdev Singh said the Government of India had sanctioned Rs 5.5 lakh relief package for 36,384 displaced families, including 26,319 families displaced during the 1947 partition and 10,065 families displaced from the Chamb sector during the wars of 1965 and 1971. While nearly 22,000 POJK families have received consideration under the relief scheme, around 4,000 families remain excluded because the mandatory records required to establish their refugee status are either missing, damaged, torn or untraceable in Government record rooms, he explained.
Gurdev Singh emphasized that these families possess several alternative and supplementary records, including camp ration cards, revenue documents of allotted lands in the Jammu region, copies of register cancellations, and land revenue extracts from their ancestral properties in POJK — all of which are sufficient proof of their displaced status.
JKSAC pointed out that displaced families from the 1965 and 1971 Chamb sector wars had also faced similar documentation problems and the J&K administration amended the 2017 order allowing thousands of those families successfully received relief.
Calling the matter a “question of justice, dignity, and equal treatment,” the committee once again appealed to Home Minister Amit Shah to extend the package deadline by one more year and ensure that every eligible displaced family from POJK receives the long-awaited relief.
The committee also appealed for the immediate release of funds in favour of nearly 500 displaced families whose cases have already been cleared by the J&K administration and forwarded to the Ministry of Home Affairs for final disbursement.
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