Rustam
JAMMU, Apr 2: The leadership of both the National Conference (NC) and the Congress has been saying that their government has never discriminated against the Jammu province and that it has always upheld the principle of justice and equity. It is a false claim. One can cite here hundreds and hundreds of instances to prove that while Kashmir has always got a preferential treatment at the time of allocation of funds, Jammu has invariably got only crumbs.
A reference here to just two examples would be enough to prove as totally false the oft-repeated claim of the NC-Congress coalition. The official statistics provided by the Planning and Development Department of Jammu & Kashmir Government concerning the additional funds sanctioned and released under District Sector reveal that during 2012-13 and 2013-14 (ending January), districts of the Kashmir Valley got a total of Rs 1429.26 lakh additional funds, the share of Jammu province was only Rs 446.96 lakh. In other words, Kashmir received almost 1000 lakh more as compared to Jammu under the head "additional". During the 2012-2013 financial year, the NC-Congress coalition government sanctioned and released Rs 1047.82 lakh as additional funds for the Kashmir's districts and only Rs 334.22 lakh for the Jammu districts.
It is pertinent to mention here that plan funds are allocated to
districts on the basis of some laid down definite parameters, land area and its nature, population, backwardness/availability of infrastructure, needs as assessed and projected by the line
departments/District Development Commissioners and so on. In terms of geographical area, Leh is the largest district and in terms of backwardness both the Ladakh districts - Leh and Kargil --, Jammu province's Poonch, Rajouri, Doda, Kishtwar, Reasi and Ramban districts and the Kashmir province's Kupwara district are categorized as the backward districts, notwithstanding the fact that there are many areas in Kathua and Udhampur districts which are also very backward and underdeveloped. It is imperative on the part of the government to give a preferential treatment to these backward districts by allocating more normal or additional funds, but it was not to be. Contrarily, it made substantial additional allocations to all the Kahmir's districts, barring Kupwara, and Rajouri, Kishtwar, Doda, Kathua and Samba districts were ignored.
What does all this show? It shows that the Congress, which has its support-base basically confined to Jammu province, has failed its constituency. The only fault of the people of Jammu province is that they, unlike the people of Kashmir, do take the law of the land into their hands. The authorities need to refashion their whole approach towards Jammu. Not to do so would be only to force them to take to
violent methods.
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