Neha
Jammu, Aug 19: The August 9 communal onslaught on Kishtwar has created mistrust between the minority community and local administration to the extent that the representatives of the former refused to meet on Saturday a high level delegation headed by Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand and comprising three other Ministers saying they would meet the delegation only if no representative of local administration was present in the meeting. Other members of the official delegation were Rural Development Minister Ali Mohammad Sagar, CAPD and Transport Minister Choudhary Mohammad Ramzan and PHE, Irrigation and Flood Control Minister Sham Lal Sharma. The situation was such that the official delegation had to concede the demand as put forth by representatives of the minority community.
And what happened in the meeting was all the more striking. The meeting continued for more than three hours to find out ways and means of defusing the tense and volatile situation arising out of reign of brutalities unleashed by certain armed anti-national elements on August 9. During the meeting, representatives of the minority community narrated their woeful tales and told the Ministers that the local administration and MoS Home Sajjad Ahmad Kitchloo failed to protect the minority community. They told the Ministers that the "police remained a mute spectator to entire barbarism of the majority community miscreants, who indulged in brazen loot and burning of their property" and charged that "police didn't act against the vandalism on the directions of Kitchloo, who had to resign as Minister of State for Home in the aftermath of Kishtwar violence". "Police, instead of performing their professional duty, took directions from the former MoS Home and allowed burning and looting of the property of minorities," they said, and added that the "demand for disbanding of the VDCs by some vested interests and mischievous persons was being made at the behest of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorists and their sympathizers". So much so, they told the Ministers that "they didn't rule out the hand of Pakistan behind the demand for disbanding the VDCs, as only the militants would benefit out of such a decision". The representatives of the minority community, in fact, leveled very serious charges against the local civil and police administration and virtually demanded that the local administration must be cleansed of all undesirable elements and vested interests. The State Government has to take some radical steps to restore the confidence of the minority community in the administration. This is a must. |
