NEW DELHI: A "missing persons" information system is being put in place for J&K, where thousands have gone missing in the worst flooding the region has seen in decades.An IAS officer who helped set up such a database during the Uttarakhand floods was sent to Srinagar on Wednesday to operationalize the system, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a note to the home ministry after Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’s high-level meeting on Wednesday."An information system in respect of missing persons is being started on the lines of the Uttarakhand disaster in 2013 and Uttarakhand IAS officer Ajay Kumar Pradyot , along with a team of the National Informatics Centre (NIC), has been dispatched to J&K to make the system operational," said the PMO’s note, a copy of which was seen by ET.While Indian authorities have rescued about a lakh since the Jhelum swelled about a week ago due to excessive rain, thousands are still unaccounted for.Officials put the number of dead on the Indian side of Kashmir at 163. It is feared that the death toll could go up sharply when the final count is made after flood waters recede.Two teams from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in Bangalore are being sent to the valley for counseling survivors.The Jhelum flows from India into Pakistan , where reports say over half a million people have been affected.According to people close to the development, the PMO was impressed with the work done by Pradyot in setting up a "Missing Cell" in Uttarakhand during the 2013 disaster. The cell involved creation of a database of missing persons through a helpline phone number, e-mail, social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook and police FIRs."The biggest problem in J&K right now is that people are getting no information on the whereabouts of their loved ones," a home ministry official said. "The information cell being set up will be a single-window system to know who are missing and if they have been rescued."