JAMMU: Congress legislator Nizamuddin Bhat has mounted pressure on the Jammu and Kashmir government to address what he called a critical shortage of staff in Bandipora district, even as he simultaneously moved a legislative proposal seeking the creation of posts at the block level across the Union territory. Representing Bandipora in the Legislative Assembly, Bhat raised the issue during Question Hour, demanding a clear timeline and department-wise vacancy details, and tabled his own draft legislation on the matter to institutionalise appointments that would plug existing administrative gaps.
Responding to Bhat’s starred question in the House, the government denied any systemic dysfunction but acknowledged that certain departments were understaffed. Official figures placed the number of sanctioned posts in Bandipora at 11,197, of which only 8,472 were filled, leaving 2,725 positions vacant across departments, including Education, Health, PWD, Power, Revenue, Forest, and Rural Development. The Department of Education alone was short by over 700 staff, while Health and PWD faced similar gaps. Other essential services, such as Social Welfare, AYUSH, and Agriculture, were also functioning with notable shortages, raising concerns about the delivery of public services in one of the region’s underdeveloped districts.
Bhat, a veteran Congress leader known for championing local issues, accused the administration of mismanaging human resources and delaying recruitment despite the scale of the problem. He said the figures laid out by the government confirmed what people on the ground had long known: that entire departments were limping without adequate manpower. While the administration maintained that a rational distribution of staff was in effect across districts, Bhat pushed back by asserting that such rationalisation often came at the cost of smaller and more rural districts like Bandipora.
In a further step, Bhat introduced a bill titled “The Jammu and Kashmir Block Level Staff Recruitment Bill,” found on pages 118 and 119 of the legislative document. The draft law aims to ensure structured appointments at the block level, arguing that local-level governance cannot be effective without properly manned offices. The bill calls for dedicated sanctioned positions in each administrative block, and mandates regular audits of human resource needs to pre-empt shortfalls. The proposal also lays down that recruitment should prioritise local candidates to boost both efficiency and public trust.
Bhat’s legislative initiative is significant in that it seeks to go beyond reactive staff transfers and offer a framework for decentralised recruitment. He argued that the current recruitment drive, which the government says will fill 1,502 gazetted and 5,751 non-gazetted vacancies by year-end, was too centralised and prone to bureaucratic inertia. He questioned whether any meaningful change could come without changing how staffing decisions were made at the grassroots.
While the government in its written reply cited the existing transfer and posting policy, including minimum and maximum tenure guidelines, it did not commit to any specific recruitment timeline for Bandipora. The administration reiterated that departments like the Public Service Commission and Service Selection Board had been tasked with fast-tracking vacancies but offered no indication of how rural districts would be prioritised.
Bhat’s twin approach—exposing the shortfall during Assembly proceedings and backing it up with a formal legislative proposal—has brought fresh urgency to a longstanding administrative concern in Jammu and Kashmir. It remains to be seen whether the Assembly will give due consideration to his bill or whether the government will amend its recruitment policy to address regional disparities in staffing. For Bandipora’s residents, who continue to rely on under-equipped public services, the question of whether the district gets its fair share of manpower remains unanswered.
