NEW DELHI, DEC 10: Kashmiri women are increasingly facing violence at their homes with the social order collapsing in the insurgency-affected Valley, so feels Girija Dhar, chairperson of the newly formed Jammu and Kashmir State Women's Commission.Dhar, who was in the Capital to attend a seminar on Kashmiri women, told The Indian Express that the commission has evoked an overwhelming response particularly in rural areas of Kashmir. The Commission had so far registered 16 FIRs, all lodged by battered wives.``Women are complaining about the denial of maintenance by husbands, collapsed health-care services, which apparently have their worst impact on the women, and lack of educational and employment opportunities for the children,'' said Dhar.The constitution of the commission has ended a protracted battle between the National Commission for Women (NCW) and the state government over the former's demand that Jammu and Kashmir be brought under its purview. Mohini Giri, former chairperson of the NCW had said that Kashmiri women were passing through the worst phase in their history and yet they had been deprived of a grievance redressal body like the NCW.Dhar said the three-member commission was organising interactive sessions with women at block level. This approach was adopted in view of the prevailing disorder in Kashmir and also with a view to rejuvenating the faith of women in the country's judicial and legal systems.Dhar confessed that the outpouring by women against the violence at home had surprised her. Interestingly, barring one case where women wanted the commission to make a recommendation to the government that the security forces should not take out women during cordon-and-search operations, the commission has not encountered any complaint against the security forces.``We have definite reports about increasing sexual harrassment of women at work places in Kashmir,'' Dhar said. The commission proposes to engage volunteers to spot the victims and then counsel them to lodge formal complaints with it. The trend is rather a shocking development in view of the strict moral code of conduct, which the fundamentalists have been trying to impose in the Valley during the last decade.The commission, which was set up in March, is dogged by the same problems which the NWC is facing. It is vested with sweeping powers matching those of a civil court but lacks total control over its funds. Although the chairperson could travel anywhere in the state, the commission has no funds for engaging professionals to conduct surveys or investigations.Dhar says the commission is being lodged at a hotel in Srinagar while it is yet to occupy its allotted government building in the state's winter capital of Jammu.
