Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik addresses a press conference in Srinagar on Wednesday. (ANI)

SRINAGAR: Jammu & Kashmir governor Satya Pal Malik on Wednesday announced that his government would fill 50,000 vacancies in various departments in the next few months. He urged the youth to come forward and participate as this would be the largest single recruitment drive ever in Jammu & Kashmir or Ladakh .

Stating that his government was working with various central agencies to put together a scheme to provide a minimum support price for the apple crop, Malik revealed that National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India was willing to commit over Rs5,000 crore for procuring more than 50% of apple production of J&K.

This would benefit over seven lakh apple farmers, he added.

The governor mentioned that a number of "important decisions" had recently been taken regarding Jammu & Kashmir, which he said were historic and would open new vistas for the growth of all its three regions - Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh.

The governor also announced that restoration of normalcy and deepening of democracy remained the government's priority and, as a first step, elections to block development councils would be conducted and completed before the end of October.

Malik further said there had been a constant endeavour to relax restrictions as quickly as possible. As of now, 81 out of 111 police station areas in Kashmir had already got daytime relaxations and further easing would be considered in the days to come, the governor added.



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