Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Tuesday announced a high-level committee headed by the chief secretary to formulate a roadmap to address the issue of regularization of services of daily wage employees.

The announcement follows a walkout by BJP legislators from the state assembly and heated exchanges between them and the ruling National Conference (NC) members on the issue of the police baton charge on protesting daily wager employees demanding regularization of their service.

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The recommendations will be presented in the next budget session before the House, he said.

This announcement was made by the chief minister while replying to the debate on his budget proposals in the Assembly.

Omar criticized the previous PDP-BJP government and said, “They failed to regularize daily wagers despite making promises in their budget speeches. Only 570 persons were regularised under their rule.”

Pointing towards the BJP MLAs, Omar said they did not make any noises when the rules for regularisation of daily wagers were scrapped by their party’s government while framing the Reorganisation of J&K Act under which the erstwhile state was downgraded as a union territory.

“We shall have to make the beginning from scratch as J&K at this point of time does not have any rules to undertake the exercise of regularising the daily wagers. The number of such employees is also to be ascertained”, he said.

“We want to reassure the daily wagers, ad-hoc, and casual employees that we have not forgotten them. I am announcing the committee in front of the Assembly and will be issuing the official order today after my budget speech,” Omar told the House.

He said that it will have the Additional Chief Secretary in the Chief Minister’s Office, along with the Secretaries of the Planning, GAD and Law Departments as members.

“The committee will be given six months to thoroughly review the number of daily wagers and assess the legal and financial aspects of their regularisation,” he added. He said that the Law Department has a prime role after the Supreme Court’s judgment on the issue.

Earlier in the morning, as BJP legislators pushed for the regularisation of daily-wage workers, National Conference (NC) MLAs countered them, accusing the BJP of failing to address the issue during their time in power. This led to a heated exchange, with NC members chanting “Shame, Shame” at the BJP, while both sides shouted slogans at each other after which the BJP members staged a walkout.

Chaotic scenes were witnessed after the question hour when BJP MLA Vikram Randhawa raised concerns about the police crackdown on daily-wage workers protesting in Jammu on Monday.

Intervening, the Chief Minister said it was a humanitarian issue and that members should wait for the government’s response on the issue of fulfilment of their demands.

“As far as the baton charge is concerned, the police are neither under your control nor ours, and such an incident should not have taken place. Please lodge a protest with those who control the police”, he said.