Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 14: Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) has questioned the State and Centre Government over the package for the PoK refugees and said whether Rs 5.50 lakh satisfied their long pending demand for one time settlement.
In a statement PCC chief spokesperson, Ravinder Sharma asked the State and Centre Govt especially BJP to come out clear and spell out the total amount to be given to each refugees family. He blamed the Govt and BJP of keeping the refugees in dark about the exact amount of package to be given to each family unit.
He said that after detailed deliberations with various refugee organizations by the Congress leadership, a package was worked out on the initiative of the then Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh Government and finally, the Congress-NC State Govt recommended a package containing grant of Rs 25 lakh to each family besides other important components, especially grant of reservation to their wards. The package was pending consideration of Central Government but could not be sanctioned due to imposition of Code of Conduct.
The All Party Parliamentary Committee had recommended grant of Rs 30 lakh relief to each family. The BJP had promised to give more than Rs 30 lakh to per family besides reservation of Assembly seats to them, however, now a meager amount of Rs 5.50 lakh has been sanctioned per family, which is a betrayal. The Govt has failed to clearly spell out the exact and final amount to be paid to each family, as it is existed at the time of migration. The families have split and multiplied many fold, being their third generation after partition.
The present refugees family would not get more than one to two lakh per family now, as per multiplication of the original family. The refugees organizations have already voiced their concern and rejected this amount of Rs 5.50 lakh as final and one time settlement. Moreover, the amount of relief should be released to each family in their respective tehsil headquarter as their records of allotments are available with their respective tehsils, whereas, they are being made to run from pillar to post to trace out copies of old records after more than 70 years, which is cumbersome and expensive process.
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