In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the authorities have said that they have issued about 12.44 lakh domicile certificates across the territory till August end.

The domicile certificates issued include 2.86 lakh in the Kashmir valley and 9.45 lakh in Jammu division.

As per the figures, a total of 1718,887 lakh applied for the issuance of the certificate, of which 1,243,996 were issued the domicile till August 31. The process of issuing domicile certificates in the territory was started in the last week of June.

After the abrogation of Kashmir-specific Article 370 on August 5 last year by the Indian government, the J&K’s permanent resident certificates (PRCs) law was abolished and replaced by the new Domicile Law which was notified by New Delhi on May 18 this year.

The new domicile policy, which is aimed at changing the demography of Jammu and Kashmir, provides citizenship rights to both original residents of the territory as well as to non-locals.