Central and JK UT Budget Vis-à-Vis Victim Kashmiri Pandits Living in Exile

 

For more than thirty-five years, the Kashmiri Pandit community has lived a life of exile, carrying the unbearable weight of genocide, displacement, dispossession, and institutional neglect. Successive governments at the Centre and in Jammu & Kashmir have presented budget after budget, announcing massive financial allocations for development, security, welfare, and growth. Yet, when these budgets are examined through the prism of justice for victim Kashmiri Pandits, an uncomfortable and painful truth emerges: the most victimized community in the history of independent India remains fiscally invisible, politically marginalized, and morally sidelined. Budgets are not neutral financial exercises. They are moral documents that reflect priorities, intent, and accountability. The Union Budget allocates tens of thousands of crores annually to the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir, and the UT Budget itself has now crossed the one-lakh-crore mark. These figures are proudly showcased as symbols of commitment to peace, prosperity, and inclusive development. However, for displaced Kashmiri Pandits living in camps, rented rooms, and scattered settlements across Jammu, Delhi, NCR, and other parts of India, these impressive numbers translate into little more than distant rhetoric. The support that does exist for Kashmiri Pandits is confined largely to monthly relief 26 assistance, limited employment scheme announced under Prime Minister's packages and some transit accommodation projects Even these measures remain inadequate delayed, unevenly implemented, and completely disconnected from present-da economic realities. Relief amounts are no indexed to inflation, cost of living, or urba survival expenses. Employment opportunities remain symbolic and insufficient for an entire generation that has grown up in exile. Trans accommodations, where constructed, lac permanence, confidence, and a clea roadmap toward dignified rehabilitation. What is most striking is not merely the inadequacy of provisions, but the complete absence of a clearly defined, exclusive, and non-lapsable budgetary framework dedicate to the rehabilitation, return, restitution, an long-term security of Kashmiri Pandits Neither the Union Budget nor the Jammu Kashmir UT Budget contains a comprehensive fiscal vision acknowledging that the displacement of Kashmiri Pandit was not a natural disaster or economi migration, but a consequence of targetes terror, religious cleansing, and the collapse of constitutional protection. The Jammu & Kashmir UT Budget speaks at length about development, tourism infrastructure, agriculture, and welfare schemes. Yet the original inhabitants of the Valley, who preserved its civilisation, culture and pluralistic ethos for centuries, find no meaningful place in this narrative. Displaced Kashmiri Pandits do not benefit from constituency development funds, MLA grants, or local welfare mechanisms because they do not reside in the Valley. Thus, while the UT Budget claims inclusivity, it structurally excludes an entire community that was forcibly removed and continues to live outside the system. A fundamental failure of both budgets lies in their inability to distinguish between relief and rehabilitation. Relief is temporary and minimal; rehabilitation is restorative, dignified, and rights-based. For thirty-five long years, Kashmiri Pandits have been confined to relief without rehabilitation, dependency without empowerment, and sympathy without justice. No budget has seriously addressed the loss of homes, land, temples, orchards, businesses, and social capital. No fiscal mechanism exists for restitution, compensation, or economic revival of the displaced community as a collective. Equally ignored is the reality that Kashmiri Pandits today are a dispersed population, living mostly outside Jammu & Kashmir. Budgetary planning remains territorially confined and blind to exile. There is no comprehensive budgetary provision for education, healthcare, senior citizens, women, or youth among displaced families living in metropolitan and semi-urban India. Prolonged displacement has resulted in social erosion, psychological trauma, and economic decline, none of which find reflection in budget speeches or expenditure statements. Despite heavy allocations for security and policing in Jammu & Kashmir, budgets fail to inspire confidence among Kashmiri Pandits regarding safe, collective, and dignified resettlement. Security without justice cannot heal wounds, and infrastructure without trust cannot bring a displaced people back home. Rehabilitation cannot be an administrative afterthought; it must be a constitutionally backed fiscal commitment. The Constitution of India promises equality, dignity, and justice to every citizen. When annual budgets repeatedly overlook the only internally displaced Hindu minority community of the country, it raises serious questions about constitutional morality. А nation that can find resources for political appeasement, subsidies, and symbolic projects must also find the will and wisdom to allocate justice-oriented budgets for victims of genocide and displacement. The Kashmiri Pandit community does not ask for charity. It seeks recognition of truth, acknowledgment of suffering, and a fair share in the nation's fiscal conscience. A just budget must include a separate and substantial budget head for Kashmiri Pandit rehabilitation, dignified and inflation-linked sustenance till permanent settlement, economic restitution for losses suffered, secure and collective resettlement with community consent, and long-term opportunities for education, employment, and entrepreneurship. Above all, it must recognise displacement and exile as a national failure that demands national responsibility. Until the Union Budget and the Jammu & Kashmir UT Budget honestly reflect this responsibility, development claims in Kashmir will remain morally incomplete. A budget that ignores its victims cannot claim to build peace. True reconciliation begins not with speeches, but with justice written into the nation's balance sheets.

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Courtesy:    Kundan Kashmiri  and Koshur Samachar- March, 2026