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| This alone won't do, Mr. Azad! | | | Early Times Special Correspondent
Jammu | Sep 23
Whether it is a panky reaction and hasty damage control exercise, to stem erosion of his credibility as a crusader against corruption or a genuine prompt response to the media reports, having wider ramification with the potential to make it a burning public issue, the step taken by Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad to cancel the allotments of 31 shops and halls in Bahu Plaza by the JDA, alone is not going to retrieve the situation. Besides the action leading to hoards of litigations by the affected allotees of commercial premises, the set back to government credibility and Ghulam Nabi Azad's claim of crusade against corruption will not be made good unless the cancellation of the allotments is followed by detailed independent enquiry into the whole murky deal.
Apart from the possibility of those allotments in whose favour have been made few years ago and who have already spent huge amount on effecting alterations and modifications to suit their requirement in the premises and heavy investment made in the business or profession setup by them there and whose business now will be adversely affected dragging the government to the court, seeking stay as well as compensation for the losses, in the process of such litigations many more skeletons are going to tumble down the cupboards, further eroding government's credibility.
The need for thorough probe to pin point the responsibility for effecting allotments without following the set procedure, both at the administrative level and the level of political heads hardly needs any over emphasis. Since the issue has intra party contours between the Congress and the PDP, more precisely between the Chief Minister and the former Forest and Housing-Urban Development Minister as well as between Azad and Mufti, the responsibility of irregularities at political level is imperative, since some of the allotments, which have been cancelled are reported to have been made during the Mufti led coalition government, as well as when Tariq Hamid Qarra was the Minister incharge Housing and Urban Development in Azad government. Any attempt at cover up and patch up between the two estranged coalition partners will simply not help. The matter having assumed wider ramifications and becoming a public issue, has not remained confined between the Congress and the PDP. The National Conference as well as the opposition parties in Jammu will be leaving no stone unturned to exploit the issue and beat the coalition government with the stick, the controversy over it will hardly die down, until all aspects of the matter are made known to the public, after thorough probe.
Then, the still important and more controversial issue of approving the building plan of a private builder constructing housing colony at Sunjwa, where some forest and nazool land is alleged to have been encroached upon, has remained unanswered.
All said and done, the mutual relations between the Congress and the PDP have touched a new low, as a result of these controversies, with the two seeking to throw the ball of irregularities in each other's court. It is perhaps in this context that the senior most Congress leader in the state and Health and Medical Education Minister Mangat Ram Sharma has in a meeting at Khour on September 22, made a fervent appeal to the people to bring Congress to power on its own in the next assembly elections, the bugle for which has already been blown. Besides the issue of self rule and demilitarization, advocated strongly by the PDP and opposed with same force by the Congress, the charges of corruption against each other by the two present coalition partners is likely to be the main plank. The chances of two parties fighting next assembly elections in alliance have become further remote and if this remote possibility does materialize, under some compulsions---in politics nothing can be ruled out and today's foes can become friends tomorrow, the people at large will take this development as the two warring thieves joining hands to loot and their alliance being unholy.
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