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| Gross Discrimination with Jammu: NC playing shots, Congress helpless | | | RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, June 24: The Omar Abdullah-led government is perpetrating injustice after injustice on the already rather marginalized and discriminated people of Jammu province, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs included. It appears that Omar Abdullah has handed down to the state a government that is of the people of Kashmir, by the people of Kashmir and for the people of Kashmir.
It was expected that the Jammu-based Congress ministers and leaders would put their foot down and ensure equal treatment to Jammu province in all spheres and at levels, but it has not happened. They have left everything to the care of Omar Abdullah, notwithstanding the fact that their core constituency is Jammu province, and not Kashmir. The Jammu-based Congress leadership has undoubtedly failed the people of Jammu province. There is nothing on the ground that could even remotely suggest that the Jammu-based ministers have acted to the best of their ability and capacity as far as the protection and promotion of the legitimate rights of the people of this province is concerned.
It was also expected that the Jammu-based NC ministers would toe their master's line and hit Jammu below the belt and they are precisely doing the same and still they have the audacity to roam about freely in the Jammu province and shamelessly boast that the NC-led government is treating the people of Jammu province fairly. The people of Jammu province, unlike the people of Kashmir province, are so simple that they welcome even those Jammu-based ministers who actually work for the development of Kashmir at the cost of Jammu in order to keep their Kashmiri masters in good humour. They behave more like courtiers than as ministers.
Credit goes to JKNPP MLA and former minister Harshdev Singh who has once again exposed the anti-Jammu State Government and laid bare the disparities between what those ruling the state have been claiming and the actual position on the ground. On Monday (June 21), Harsh Dev Singh, who is also the working chairman of the party, accused the Industries Department, headed by a Jammu-based NC minister, of "perpetuating regional bias against Jammu". His charge was that the Jammu-based NC minister had approved a scheme under which all the new industrial estates would be set up in Kashmir alone. In other words, his charge was that the Jammu-based NC minister has hit people of Jammu province below the belt to please his Kashmiri master, Omar Abdullah.
What Harsh Dev Singh said was not a figment of imagination. Whatever he said was based on the official records and on the information tabled by the anti-Jammu government on the floor of the Assembly from time to time in response to the questions put by the various legislators. The JKNPP MLA made startling revelations while talking to media persons and the revelations were to the effect that "the Government had only last week cleared 9 new industrial estates for development and all of them have been assigned to the Kashmir region"; that the "Government has provided incentives and soft loans to the potentially revivable 66 industrial units in the State, but the share of Jammu is a paltry 7 and that of Kashmir as high as 59"; that the Jammu-based NC minister has applied the 'Rehabilitation Scheme' in a wrong way in order to benefit Kashmir at the cost of Jammu; and that the Industry Minister or the Industries Department has given subsidies to thousands of units which are not "traceable."
To make his last point clear, Harsh Dev disclosed, "as per the information supplied to him in the Assembly, subsidies had been availed by 15,000 fake industrial units, out of which 12,855 belonged to the Kashmir region and 2,992 units to the Jammu province." He threw a bombshell when he made a startling disclosure to the effect that "subsequently all these industrial units became untraceable." So mush so that he demanded a "probe into" what he called the "subsidy trading."
If what Harsh Dev Singh has said is not gross discrimination with the people of Jammu province, then what it is? It is indeed injustice with the hapless people of Jammu province. What the question is: What the Congress, which has 13 MLAs from Jammu province, and the BJP, which has 11 MLAs, doing to defend the Jammu's genuine cause? The question is straight and its answer is also not far to seek. These 24 Jammu-based MLAs are only dancing to the tunes of their Kashmiri masters in order to fulfill their own insatiable lust for money - lust, they believe, they could fulfill only if they remain on the right side of the Kashmiri rulers. This is not a good approach. They will have to pay a heavy price in case they continue to behave in the fashion they have been behaving since January 5, 2009, when the anti-Jammu Kashmiri-dominated government was installed. |
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