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| CM's LPG submission: Altruism or Embarrassment ? | | | early times report
jammu, Nov 5: The surrender of multiple LPG connections by Chief minister Omar Abdullah and a day later by his father Farooq Abdullah have been projected as supreme sacrifices made out of altruism, but the fact of the matter is that the surrender was made out of embarrassment following media expose.
If an elected chief minister needs media to tell him what cooks his food in his own kitchen is he expected to know what happens to the ordinary folks by the huge crisis caused by disappearance of even unsubsidized gas. While CM of a state living in the splendid isolation of his dream world may not have any use even for that lone cylinder that he retained the fact determines the distance he has to travel to connect with his subjects as he has just yet to connect with his own kitchen.
Second, the chief minister has asked the media to do more exposes on gas and come out with the entire list of offenders like him. What does the chief minister presiding over one of the heftiest administrations think of media? Should it be doing what his police and the most organized public distribution system in the country is not able to perform? Media raises the issues and it is the job of a government to respond and act. The chief minister cannot get away from the mess he has created on the gas front by trying to play to galleries yet again and not mentioning his administration even by way of passing on the buck. This brings back the memories of his balidaan last winter when he asked the electricity department not to restore his power connection until the last subject got it. That was notwithstanding the fact that the VVIP is served by the largest generator in the area as of course is the leader of opposition living on the same street.
But the most outstanding irony is that Omar Abdullah made the voluntary surrender of gas connections on a day the newspapers carried a challenge from Mehbooba Mufti to appoint a commission to probe assets of all politicians who held a public position post 1975. The statement had mentioned how the Abdullah family is sitting on the costliest estate which is not inherited but acquired through the most brazen act of nepotism and favoritism. It is said Maharaja Hari Singh paid compensation for every inch of land he acquired to construct his palace in the area. But how the previous occupants of Gupkar estate were evicted to make room for the new royals is a more painful part of the story.
One would have expected him to respond to the serious debate over how politicians are growing fat and rich without doing anything except politics but what happened is the usual degeneration of sublime to ridiculous.
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