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| Rajouri turns coalition capital: CM, 11 Ministers tour in three weeks | | District administration on protocol duty, only 14% work executed till October end | |
ZAFAR CHOUDHARY
Jammu, Dec 18: The Government, through an order of the General Administration Department on personal instructions of Chief Minister, has advised the Divisional Commissioners of Jammu and Kashmir to spend half of the month outside their headquarters and half in their offices for a balance between file work and field work monitoring.
Not far away from the capital cities and divisional headquarters, the Deputy Commissioner of Rajouri JP Singh and the SSP Shafqat Wattali have rarely been able to attended their offices over past one month. It does not mean that they were over exerting on the field work monitoring at the cost of file work. In fact, these two top officers of the district administration along with many others are mostly on the protocol duty of Ministers as Rajouri appears to have been turned into a ‘capital’ of coalition Ministers.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has recently taken a pragmatic step asking the Divisional Commissioners and Zonal Inspectors General of Jammu and Kashmir Divisions not to take an extra trouble of protocol by seeing him off or receiving him at the airports. He has asked them to utilize this time for delivery of their official responsibilities in offices or fields.
This privilege is however not available to the officers in the districts, much less in Rajouri. Unusually turned into a hot hub of political activity, often a field of fracas between leaders of ruling partners National Conference and Congress, Rajouri district is these days hosting too frequent visits of Ministers thus pulling entire administrative machinery out of their offices and putting them as a part of their long cavalcades.
It is not that the Ministers are on leisure visit to the district which is yet to have any matching infrastructure to host such guests, but locals are surprised about the competitive interest of both Congress and National Conference Ministers in the district. For the Deputy Commissioner, SSP and other officers, it has almost become a routine run, like city shuttle service, between Rajouri and Sunderbani or Nowshera or Kalakote to receive the Ministers as a matter of protocol and see them off.
Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand today returned after his three-day tour of Rajouri as his visit coincided with that of Rural Development Minister Ali Mohammad Sagar and Auqaf Minister Ajaz Ahmed Khan. The Ministers concentrate less on meetings and more on public meetings keeping the administrative machinery on standby. As parting note of itinerary, Tara Chand had a public meeting in Nowshera while Sagar and Ajaz addressed people in Thanna Mandi and Shahdra Sharief.
Sometimes the district administrative machinery finds itself in a soup when as many as three Cabinet Ministers are roaming around the town at same time. Most of the time one group is not aware of the visit of the other and administration finds it difficult attending both. Tara Chand, Sagar and Ajaz were headed for Rajouri when Social Welfare Minister Sakina Ittoo was still there.
Sakina reached Rajouri just a day after Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather returned. Both had an event at the Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University which has almost become a landmark to be touched by every visiting political being.
Last week it was an extended Rajouri tour of Health Minister Sham Lal Sharma who spent around three days in touring across different parts of the district. It was during Sham Lal’s visit that Minister of State for Power Shabir Ahmed Khan and National Conference MLA from Kalakote Kunwar Rashpal Singh just stopped short of pulling each other’s collar. Khan and Singh hurled choicest of invectives at each other in full public view and then got up to pounce at each other. It was on intervention of PDP MLA Choudhary Zulfikar Ali that a physical brawl was narrowly averted.
Same heated exchanges of arguments were observed between the duo just few days ahead of this incident when Industries Minister Surjeet Singh Slathia was on Rajouri visit. Slathia was in Rajouri to review the progress on district plan and it turned out that only 14 per cent of the district plan works had been executed till October ending. Locals are worried over the frequent visits of Ministers to Rajouri which is engaging the district administration in protocol duties and hampering execution of development works. Rajouri is a hilly district and most of its areas get snowbound with onset of winters bringing developmental activities to a halt.
Forest Minister Mian Altaf Ahmed, Works Minister Ghulam Mohammad Saroori Higher Education Minister Abdul Ghani Malik are the other three Cabinet Ministers who visited Rajouri in last three weeks. One of them visited twice.
It may be mentioned here that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah himself has been to the district twice in last three weeks addressing two National Conference conventions –one in Kalakote constituency and other in Darhal constituency.
Interestingly, while the schedule coalition Ministers remain drawn, it is now perhaps the turn of opposition. PDP leader and former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed is now traveling to the district on December 20 for his party’s self rule seminar.
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