news details |
|
|
| Congress causing more harm to Jammu | | | Neha
Jammu, Oct 4: The Congress had held out a categorical assurance that it, if voted to power, would not only amend the state constitution to federalize the state polity and establish regional council for Jammu, but would also appoint a delimitation commission to delimit the assembly constituencies afresh and ensure that Jammu got due representation in the assembly, which discusses and decides questions of supreme importance. In 2002 as well, the Congress had made a similar commitment. The only difference was that time it promised to establish in Jammu a development council.
The Congress did come to power in 2002, but it did nothing whatever to fulfill any of these solemn promises on the basis of which it had captured 15 seats from Jammu province. It violated the Jammu's mandate, ditched the people of this province and allowed itself to be dictated by the PDP, which headed the government till November 4, 2005. The Congress treated Jammu province very shabbily during those three years when the PDP was in full command.
On November 5, 2005, the Congress sat in the driver's seat and Ghulam Nabi Azad under whose leadership the Congress had contested the 2002 assembly elections became the Chief Minister. It was hoped that he would do the needful and meet the age-old demand of the people of Jammu province seeking representation in the assembly on the basis of the criteria laid down by the Representation of People's Act. The hope had stemmed from the fact that it was he who had, along with others, released the election manifesto in Jammu with much fanfare. Mercifully, he also didn't take any step whatever to redress the Jammu's decades-old problem.
On the contrary, his government rejected out-of-hand the private member's bill seeking parity between Kashmir and Jammu as far as their representation in the assembly was concerned. This was a shock of sorts. The people of Jammu had never expected that Azad would forget the promise he and his party had made and that he himself would become a party to the patently anti-Jammu stand taken by all the Kashmir-based parties, including the NC, the PDP, the CPI and the People's Democratic Forum (PDF).
Azad inflicted yet another blow in 2007, when he applied the Wazir Commission report in a wrong way and created eight new districts in the state, four each in Kashmir and Jammu province. He took this mind-boggling decision despite the fact that there was no demand in Kashmir for more administrative units and he acknowledged this fact during his interaction with reporters. He, in addition, told reporters that since he believed in the principle of justice and equity and regional balance, he had taken this step.
Remember, the Wazir Commission had recommended three new districts for Jammu province, namely Kishtwar, Reasi and Samba (Bahu) and one for Kashmir, namely Bandipora. Wazir Commission was appointed under pressure from Jammu. The plea of the people of Jammu province was that their province was two times bigger than Kashmir and that the bulk of its area was hilly, mountainous and inaccessible as the nature of terrain was difficult and treacherous. At least four persons had laid down their lives to force the authorities to set up a commission to look into the complaints of the people of Jammu province and redress their grievances.
The fact of the matter is that Azad badly let down the people of Jammu province in his desperate bid to placate the people of Kashmir. He failed in his game-plan but in the process he did damage Jammu to the extent no Chief Minister in the past had damaged, notwithstanding the fact that all of his predecessors were known for their utter bias towards the people of Jammu province, Hindu, Muslims and Sikhs included. (To be continued) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
STOCK UPDATE |
|
|
 |
| BSE
Sensex |
 |
| NSE
Nifty |
|
|
| |
CRICKET UPDATE |
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
