Context

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the Centre is moving fast to integrate the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and has passed new domicile order and rules, evoking sharp reaction from stakeholders like unemployed youth, traders and all mainstream political parties.

About

Who can be ‘domiciled’ or ‘employed’ in J&K?

• The new rule only reserves non-gazetted class four jobs for Jammu & Kashmir natives.
• It also lists certain conditions one should fulfil to qualify as a domicile applicant — applicants should have resided in J&K for 15 years, or studied in the state for seven years and appeared in either the Class 10 or the Class 12 examination there.
• Children of central government officers (Army, paramilitary forces, IAS, IPS), and employees of public sector undertakings and banks, central universities etc who have served in Jammu & Kashmir for 10 years will also be eligible to apply for gazetted and non-gazetted government jobs. These included those who work outside the state.
• Migrants registered by the Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner need not fulfil the aforementioned requirements and will automatically be eligible for a domicile certificate.

Background:

• On August 5, 2019, Parliament had diluted Article 370 of the Constitution, revoked the special status of J&K and had bifurcated the State into two Union Territories-
  • J&K
  • Ladakh
• The two revoked provisions of the Constitution let the J&K Legislature decide the “permanent residents”, prohibiting a non-J&K resident from buying property there and ensuring job reservation for its residents.
• In March this year, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Adaptation of State Laws) Order, 2020by publishing a gazette notification.
• Through the order, the MHA amended 109 laws and repealed 29 laws of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir.
• The MHA amended a 2010 legislation, the Jammu and Kashmir Civil Services (Decentralisation and Recruitment Act),by substituting the term “permanent residents” with “domiciles of UT [Union Territory] of J&K.”
• The 2010 Act pertained to employment in the Civil Services comprising “district, divisional and State” cadre posts.
• Earlier, only permanent residents of J&K were eligible to apply for gazetted and non-gazetted posts.

Conclusion

Though the new domicile order for J&K ostensibly deals only with jobs, it has created a new category of residents of J&K which every citizen of India can become through a process. The new rules explicitly show that the central government wants to speed up the process.