Omar Abdullah announces panel on regularisation of daily wagers

Chief minister Omar Abdullah on Tuesday announced a high-powered panel headed by chief secretary Atal Dulloo with the sole motive to come up with a roadmap for addressing the issue of regularising daily wagers, ad hoc workers and casual labourers across Jammu and Kashmir.

According to an old estimate of the previous PDP-BJP coalition government that fell apart in June 2018, Jammu and Kashmir had 61,000 such workers engaged by various government departments.

Apart from the chief secretary, the panel has an additional chief secretary in the chief minister’s office and secretaries of the general administration, planning and law departments, respectively.

The committee has been given six-month time to come up with a framework suggesting long-term solutions.

“After my speech today, I am announcing a committee, and an order will be issued after a day’s business. The committee will be headed by chief secretary and it will have additional chief secretary in the CM’s office and secretaries of the planning, GAD and law departments because the issue has a legal aspect to it,” Omar said during his reply following general discussion on budget for the 2025-26 fiscal in the legislative assembly here.

“The panel will be given six months to prepare a framework. First, we have to get their numbers via the general administration department and then explore a roadmap for their regularisation, so that before the next budget we can tell the House that this is what we are doing for them,” said the CM.

He recalled how previous governments had “buried the issue under the carpet”.

“Before coming to the house, I went through budget speeches since 2015-16 and found that only in the 2018-19 budget, SRO 520 was issued under which only 570 daily wagers were regularised,” he said.

Responding to criticism in the Assembly, Omar 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.

The government must start from scratch to resolve their concerns, he said.

Earlier in his speech, Omar described his budget as a love letter to the people of Jammu and Kashmir where he tried his best in the given resources to do some good to the people.

Omar yet again thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for their support to Jammu and Kashmir.

“They have helped J&K and why should I be ashamed of it? I thanked them earlier and I am thanking them again,” he said and added that Jammu and Kashmir was not a financially independent region.

“While I am trying to fix the problem and we have taken some small steps in that direction, the fact is that we are not financially independent. To utilise the capex budget of ₹35000 crore, we incur ₹70,000 crore as revenue expenditure. We know we have to rely on the Centre for budgetary support,” he said.

Responding to the opposition, particularly BJP members, the chief minister remarked that instead of focusing on the budget, their speeches were centered around Article 370, Maharaja Ji, and July 13.

“Initially, I thought his speech had substance, but in reality, there was nothing related to the budget,” he said, referring to a BJP legislator Mankotia’s remarks.