Sajad Lone Questions Kashmir Valley’s Share in JKAS, Accounts Officer Recruitment, Announces Assembly Intervention

GNS ONLINE NEWS PORTAL

SRINAGAR, SEPT, 16:-Sajad Ghani Lone MLA has raised questions over the regional distribution of recently selected JKAS and J&K Accounts (Gazetted) officers, claiming that only 10 out of 55 selected candidates are from the Kashmir Valley.

In a post shared from his official X handle on Wednesday, Lone said that against what he described as a 56 per cent population share of the Valley, its inhabitants had received only around 18 per cent of the selections.

Lone also questioned the presence of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah at the appointment ceremony, stating that “ideally he should have kept away” from the process.

Describing the recruitment figures as “recruitment apartheid,” Lone alleged that the present reservation system was contributing to the “disempowerment  and marginalisation” of the inhabitants of Kashmir Valley.

“I have all along maintained that reservations is a Jammu vs Kashmir issue, rooted in ethnically disempowering the inhabitants of valley,” Lone wrote.

He further claimed that the regional imbalance would not be substantially altered even if the proposal reportedly sent by the elected government to the Union Government were approved, arguing that the Valley’s share would rise only marginally.

Lone said he would raise the matter in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly through “appropriate legislative devices” and expressed hope that legislators across party lines would highlight what he termed the seriousness of the issue.

He called for an explicit debate on the reservation system, alleging that it was being used as a methodology to “disempower and relegate to the margins” the inhabitants of Kashmir Valley.

The claims regarding the regional distribution of the 55 selections and the population ratio cited by Lone could not be independently verified from the statement alone.