(Kashmir Rechords Desk)
In Jammu and Kashmir, official websites seem to be no longer instruments of governance. They are props. Launched with ceremony, left to rot without accountability, they exist to create an illusion of care while delivering administrative indifference. For displaced Kashmiri Pandits—people already stripped of homes, dignity and decades of security—this digital apathy is not a minor inconvenience. It is cruelty by design.
When governments speak of Digital Governance and citizen services, citizens expect access, transparency and resolution. What they receive instead, in Jammu and Kashmir, is something far more disturbing: digital deceit masquerading as reform.
A Portal Meant to Heal, Turned into a Weapon of Neglect
The Kashmir Migrants Immovable Properties/Community Assets Related Grievance Redressal System, launched under the Department of Disaster Management, Relief, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction (DMRRR), was projected as a lifeline for displaced Kashmiri Pandits—a long-awaited mechanism to reclaim properties lost to violence, encroachment and abandonment.
Today, that portal stands exposed as a hollow shell.
Months after its launch, the system remains functionally dead. Complaints cannot be filed. Grievances cannot be submitted. And accountability remains nowhere in sight. What was advertised as empowerment has devolved into one of the most callous administrative failures in the Union Territory.
This failure is neither unknown nor undocumented.
On October 23, 2025, Kashmir Rechords published a detailed report (https://kashmir-rechords.com/digital-betrayal-how-jk-governments-grievance-portal-cheats-kashmiri-pandits/) exposing the portal’s dysfunction, tagging the Lieutenant Governor’s administration and even the Raj Bhavan. The response from the authorities has been chillingly predictable: absolute silence.
In a democracy, silence in the face of documented suffering is not neutrality. It is complicity.
The Cruelty of an Unsent OTP
The real story begins where governance collapses—at the moment a displaced migrant tries to file a grievance.
The portal demands OTP verification on email before submission. Migrants comply, entering exhaustive personal details and property records—often tied to memories of homes they were forced to flee over three decades ago.
But the OTP never arrives.
The process stops mid-way. The complaint remains unsubmitted. Hours of emotional and administrative labour vanish into a digital void.
This is not a technical oversight. This is systemic indifference encoded into software.
As anguished netizens observed: “This is not a glitch. It is deliberate negligence—a mockery of an already battered community.”
Developed and hosted by the Jammu and Kashmir e-Governance Agency (JaKeGA), this portal functions less as a grievance redressal system and more as a bureaucratic dead end. It absorbs hope, records nothing, and resolves even less.
For a government that repeatedly claims commitment to the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits, this portal exposes a disturbing truth: the rhetoric is alive, but the responsibility is dead.
A Helpline That Cannot Be Called
If the broken OTP is insult enough, the so-called helpline seals the deception.
The prominently displayed number—0191-2956285—is invalid. Non-functional. Repeated calls return a robotic verdict: “This number is invalid.” Truecaller vaguely identifies it as a “Kashmir Helpline Jammu Property,” a label that mocks the very idea of assistance.
A dead helpline is not an error. It is a confession.
The portal assures applicants that “the concerned District Magistrate will contact the applicant.” In reality, not a single migrant reports receiving a call, an email, or even an acknowledgment.
Responses to Kashmir Rechords’ October 23 exposé tell a uniform story: no response, no communication, no redress—despite public tagging of the highest constitutional offices in the UT.
A grievance portal that prevents grievances from being filed is not governance—it is state-sponsored silence. It offers visibility without voice, access without outcome, and promises without presence.
This is not merely a broken website.
It is a broken promise.
And for a community still waiting to return home, it is yet another reminder that exile has now been digitised.
It’s frustrating that after years of displacement, Kashmiri Pandits still face such basic obstacles in the name of ‘rehabilitation.’ The faulty website and helpline are a symbol of systemic failure.