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| …but Omar knew it all | | | Early Times Reporter
Jammu | July 16
It is well after the fall of his government that the former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad is making a long list of what people lost but interestingly, it seems that the National Conference president Omar Abdullah knew about all the populist measures if the government had continued.
Omar also says that the Union Home Minister made some last minute efforts to save the boat by proposing Saif-ud-Din Soz as Chief Minister if Peoples Democratic Party had agreed to relent from its stand. So after almost six years, four months short of its expected life the Assembly in J&K has been dissolved but not after some last minute attempts to keep it alive, says Omar.
“In the dying moments of the Assembly the Home Ministry in Delhi is believed to have written to the Governor asking him not to impose rule from Raj Bhavan and that he should explore options for an elected Government. The name of Saif-u-Din Soz was almost agreed upon until Mufti Sayeed pulled the plug from America. I was not privy to any of these discussions but my sources are usually credible. Poor Soz has long hoped that he would be able to replace Azad but this time it was not to be”, Omar writes in his blog.
As if Omar knew all what government could have done in the coming days, he further writes, “I can understand the desperation among those that were till recently partners in this Government because they had prepared the ground for an onslaught of populist measures in the run up to the elections and suddenly had the carpet pulled out from under them. It is like a cricket team that goes in to the last ten overs of a fifty over match with seven of their batsmen ready to hit every ball across the boundary line only to find the captain has declared the innings and walked back to the pavilion”.
Giving an inside account of the proposed populist measures, the National Conference president says, some of the measures in the pipeline that one has heard of include almost sixty thousand jobs to be distributed among sixty odd MLAs of the ruling parties and independent supporters which is almost a thousand per MLA. Four crore rupees had been kept for each of their assembly constituencies for fast track development works out of state funds. The retirement age of employees was to be raised to curry favour with all the government employees. A stipend for unemployed youth was also in the pipeline. This is apart from the regular ribbon cutting and foundation stone laying that is usually a hallmark of a government close to an election. In the budget presented to the assembly this year a much higher than average sum of money was set aside by each department for publicity. No doubt this was to be used for a flurry of advertisments in newspapers and on local television channels. This would have the twin benefit of reward those media outlets that were or will be favourable and at the same time brainwash voters in to believing what a great job the government had done”.
“I don’t grudge the government any of this since it is the advantage of incumbency. I am only surprised that we did not think of doing any of this when we were in power in 2002. I guess we were so damn sure about the TINA factor that we could not be bothered. I am glad the voter taught us otherwise. I do, however, feel bad for all those youth who could have been adjusted in the tens of thousands of jobs that will lie unfilled till the beginning of next year at the earliest by which time more of them will join the growing numbers of ””overage”” candidates. Its also a pity that in a state, that more often than not, has been starved of funds will waste all the money that had been set aside for those ””fast-track”” works. By the time the new government takes over in the end of November most of the state will be experiencing weather that will not allow work to proceed and the money will lapse at the end of the financial year”, says Omar. |
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