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| Rather speechless in Assembly over JKB’s Rs 6.5 Cr loan to PDP leader | | Drabu escapes with another embarrassment for Omar’s Govt | | Ahmed Ali Fayyaz
SRINAGAR, Aug 29: Close on the heels of Mehbooba Mufti’s revelation that former Economic Advisor to Jammu & Kashmir Government, Haseeb Drabu, had simultaneously functioned as a political advisor to the PDP and drafted the party’s ‘Self Rule’ concept alongwith Muzaffar Hussain Baig, Omar Abdullah’s National Conference-led coalition Government was subjected to yet another embarrassment today: Minister of Finance, Abdul Rahim Rather, had no answer to the Independent MLA Sheikh Abdul Rashid’s question in Legislative Assembly. It was for the first time, at least since 1996, that a Minister himself pleaded for deferment of a starred question after learning that the reply was altogether missing from the file.
Figuring at serial number 2 of today’s List of Questions in the Assembly, MLA Sheikh Abdul Rashid’s question was: a) Whether it is a fact that the Jammu & Kashmir Bank, through its Polo View Branch, has provided a loan of Rs 6.50 Cr, besides other loans for raising housing colonies and fruit business, to Adnan Business Group without taking any mortgages against the loan amounts; and b) if reply to part (a) be in affirmative, the reasons for asking the common educated unemployed and skilled persons to keep huge mortgages against the minor loans/advances ?
As the MLA, on his turn, got up with his AQ No: 1088, Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather, who was supposed to respond, pleaded that he was not in possession of the reply. It was thus for the first time for Mr Rather, who has functioned as Minister incharge Law and Parliamentary Affairs for several years in the past, to plead for deferment of a question. MLA shouted that he had submitted the question in time before July 1st and asked why the Minister had not obtained reply from Finance Department. MLA further shouted that Jammu & Kashmir Bank was a Government-owned public company and not the fiefdom of its Chairman.
After Mr Rather’s repeated request to Speaker, Mohammad Akbar Lone, and subsequently latter’s persuasion, MLA agreed on deferment of the question. Speaker proceeded to the next question without making it clear whether the MLA’s question had been deferred for the last day of the session next week or for the next session.
Informed sources revealed to Early Times that MLA Sheikh Rashid had submitted his question after a group of unemployed youth from Sumbal area approached him with the complaint that J&K Bank officials had created a chain of hassles for them and refused to grant them even small loans of Rs one Lakh without mortgage. They claimed that they had approached the bank to seek small advances for establishing small businesses after their cases had been approved by DIC and other authorities for self-employment schemes.
The delegation of unemployed youth from Sumbal explained how PDP’s defeated candidate, Yasir Rishi, had been granted huge loan of Rs 3.00 Crore for developing a housing colony and another sum of Rs 3.57 Crore for establishing fruit business in a couple of weeks. They claimed that on the PDP Patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s intervention, Chairman of J&K Bank, Haseeb Drabu, had got the loan of Rs 6.57 Crore sanctioned through Polo View Branch of the bank in the name of Adnan Business Group floated by Yasir Rishi. According to them, it was in days of sanctioning of the loan that Yasir Rishi was fielded as PDP’s candidate in Sumbal segment in the Assembly elections of 2008.
Sources said that the delegation of the unemployed youth also met a number of other MLAs and Ministers and narrated to them how Chairman of J&K Bank had shifted a senior official of the bank to an insignificant posting as he had objected to granting of loan without security and argued that RBI guidelines had no provision of such advances for the business of property dealing. Subsequently, some legislators of the ruling party took up the matter with State Vigilance Organisation which started a preliminary inquiry earlier this year.
However a top-ranking executive in J&K Bank claimed that the loan of Rs 6.57 Crore had been sanctioned and released in favour of Adnan Business Group after duly completing all formalities including securing of mortgage from the applicant. He said that proprietor of Adnan Business Group (ABG), Adnan Rishi, was a cousin to the PDP leader Yasir Rishi. Nevertheless, well-placed sources in PDP insisted that Yasir Rishi was the real proprietor. They confirmed that Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Chairman of J&K Bank, Haseeb Drabu, had personally interned to ensure that the loan was sanctioned and released before Rishi’s taking PDP’s ticket for contesting the elections.
Senior leaders in National Conference admitted that both the incidents---revelation of Drabu having worked more for PDP than for the PDP-Congress coalition government’s Economic Advisor and now an MLA’s revelation that he had also sanctioned loan of Rs 6.50 Crore in favour of a PDP candidate on the eve of Assembly elections last year---had come as a major embarrassment for Omar Abdullah’s government. Even after removing Drabu as Economic Advisor to the state Government earlier this year, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had allowed him to continue as Chairman of J&K Bank Ltd. “It seems as if PDP is still running the government”, observed a Cabinet rank Minister and asked why Mr Rather should be subjected to the humiliation of defending the opposition party’s ideologue.
One of the senior most leaders of Congress party said that by way of managing a press release from the PDP spokesman, Naeem Akhtar, on Wednesday evening, Mr Drabu had only established his continued proximity and influence with the PDP. As pointed out by NC’s MLA, Choudhary Mohammad Ramzan, in Assembly on Thursday, PDP statement had initially confirmed Ms Mehbooba Mufti’s credit to Drabu for drafting the Self Rule concept but within two hours party’s spokesman had issued another statement, requesting editors to delete reference to Mr Drabu. |
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