Jammu and Kashmir Police booked 246 people in 180 cases under the NDPS Act in 2023. Thirty of them were slapped with Public Safety Act.
JAMMU KASHMIR
As the Manoj Sinha administration announced offering a 5-marla (126 sq meters or 1360 sq ft) land to the homeless, a new controversy has emerged. In a hurriedly arranged news conference, Sinha told reporters that 199550 homeless families stand identified under the Prime Minister’s Awas Yojana (PMAY) till June 21. “So far, 144000 families have been given the sanction and others are being also sanctioned money and the target will be completed by 2024,” he said, insisting 2711 landless families are being provided land 5-marla land.
Reactions were quick. “As per the 2011 census of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and another Government report released in 2021, there are approximately 19047 landless individuals in the region”, Mehbooba Mufti said.
“However, the LG’s statement suggests that they aim to provide land or homes to around 2 lakh people, with 145,000 already receiving approval. Assuming an average family size of four people, this would amount to a population of 10 lakhs.” She alleged the demography is being altered and the plan is a “dangerous game”. Asking the administration to come clean, Omar Abdullah said: “Is the government counting those as homeless who came here just a week ago and are claiming land in J&K?”
Jammu’s 31 heritage sites are being restored even as 18 monuments are undergoing the process of restoration.
The government came up with a rebuttal. It said a felid survey showed 199550 people are houseless. Since the government cannot fund home construction of people not having land, it was decided that 2711 families lacking a land resource will be provided small patches of land. These families include “people residing on State land; people residing on Forest land; people residing in Rakhs and Farms land, where construction is not permitted; people sitting on Custodian land; and Land allotted to displaced people by Government near Dachigam park for agriculture purpose, where construction is not permitted besides any other category of cases who are otherwise eligible for housing but do not have any land available for construction.”
PDP, however, insisted: The main question of a “sharp jump in numbers of homeless people from 1947 in 2021 to nearly two lakh households remains unaddressed.” The spokesman added: “Two lakh identified households still remain homeless raises doubts about the sharp increase. Either the exercise is flawed or the intentions are suspect.”
Kashmir’s endangered stag; Hangul has improved its population to 289, up from 186 in 2015 and 261 in 2021.
JAMMU
Finally, Jammu and Kashmir Police’s Crime Branch has started investigating the real date of birth of Government Medical College (GMC) Jammu Principal Dr Shashi Sudhan Sharma. It raided her office last week, within two days after a case was formally registered. Currently the Dean and the Principal, Shashi was booked for cheating and forgery after an inquiry over a complaint filed by Manu Gupta, a resident of Channi Himmat in Jammu. The complainant had alleged that Sudhan had tampered with her age documents to get an undue advantage for getting admission in the MBBS course at the GMC, Jammu, as she was underage for MBBS admission as per the Medical Council of India norms. Crime Branch officials said Sharma possessed two birth dates – April 8, 1964, and April 8, 1965. The inquiry revealed that while applying for the MBBS course, she had submitted her matriculation diploma mentioning her birth year as 1964 to get admission in 1981. Later, at the time of getting appointed as an assistant surgeon in 1988, Sharma claimed that her birth year was 1965.
In 2022, as many as 41110 people sought treatment for substance abuse in Kashmir, IMHANS records suggest, insisting it was nearly double of 23403 cases in 2021.
RAMBAN
Finally, the 1.08 km long, 2-lane viaduct on the Udhampur-Ramban section of NH-44 will help Ramban breathe better. Constructed at an investment of Rs 140 crore, it consists of 26 spans, and incorporates a combination of concrete and steel girders, showcasing various structural arrangements. The viaduct has relieved Ramban Bazaar from chronic congestion thus ensuring smoother movement of vehicles.
Oil companies BPCL and HPCL are setting up 677 new petrol pumps – 342 in Jammu, 301 in Kashmir and 34 in Ladakh. They already run 646 fuel stations in Jammu and Kashmir and 32 in Ladakh.
DELHI
Chief Justice, Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud flew to Srinagar for an All India Legal Services Authorities meeting where Mehbooba Mufti tweeted: “We welcome CJI to Jammu and Kashmir and want to remind him of Article 370 and the commitment of the people of the country to maintain the special status of J&K under the constitutional provisions when the Muslim majority region joined hands with India without any compulsion.” As many as 23 petitions challenging the BJP government decision have been waiting for three years and more than 11 months. As the CJI reached Delhi, a 5-judge constitution bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, BR Gavai, and Surya Kant was constituted that will meet on July 11, and schedule hearings. The actual hearings are expected to start in August.
In 6 months, nearly 100 thousand tourists visited Aharbal. The waterfall was visited by 55674 in 202; 107 thousand in 2021 and 108 thousand in 2022.
“Welcome Hon’ble SC’s decision to finally hear petitions pending since 2019 challenging the illegal abrogation of Article 370. I hope justice is upheld & delivered for the people of J&K. The SC ruling on Article 370 maintained that the provision can be abrogated only on the recommendation of the J&K constituent assembly,” Mebooba tweeted. “Finally the bench is constituted. I look forward to the hearings beginning in right earnest now,” added Omar Abdullah. “Welcoming the decision of the constitutional bench, albeit delayed, to take up a clutch of petitions challenging the abrogation of article 370 & division of the historic state. The move was an assault on the constitutional order and was taken without the consent of the people,” Yousuf Tarigami said.
The erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir witnessed 32 earthquakes between January and June 2023. Of them, 16 earthquakes had an intensity between 3.2 and 5.4 on the Richter scale.
KARGIL
The Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has upheld the acquittal of Border Security Force (BSF) personnel accused of killing three army men during the intervening night of July 16 and 17, 1999 (Kargil war). When Lt Sanjiv Dahiya led a party and was moving towards his place of posting, Malabela Post, they were fired upon from a BSF bunker at Pargal (Jammu) in which three soldiers were killed. The BSF man was arrested and investigated by the army and the police and finally, he was formally tried but the court at Akhnoor observed that the tragic killings were just an accident. The prosecution disagreed and the case landed in the High Court where the trial court decision was upheld.
SMC collects six metric tons of waste on a daily basis from Srinagar. This Eid, they collected 147 metric tonnes of animal waste – 70 MT on day 1, 50 MTs on day 2 and 27 MTs on day 3.
SHOPIAN
The Jammu and Kashmir government has terminated the services of two medical doctors – Dr Nighat Shaheen Chiloo, consultant gynaecologist in the Sub-District Hospital Chadoora, Budgam, and Dr Bilal Ahmad Dalal, medical officer, NTPHC Takiya Imam Shopian, for generating fake evidence in the 2019 Asiya Nilofer case. Though an initial commission of inquiry appointed by the government upheld the mass allegation of rape and murder, a subsequent investigation by the CBI proved it an accident and a “conspiracy”. The federal investigator said the two medicos played a role in “fabrication” of reports, slides “fudged”, witnesses “threatened”, while many were “offered inducements”. Police dossier termed Chiloo, 59, “to be a key player in the adversary’s campaign to shape the narrative in its (Pakistan’s) favour in J&K, even if it meant creating and propagating false and distorted accounts of incidents and events.” The police have accused Dalal, 58, of “maliciously prepared post-mortem reports incorporating false elements to support the false theory of rape and murder of the two women that had come to be mischievously floated and propagated by the Pakistan proxies within the terrorist-secessionist networks.”
Jammu and Kashmir collected 588.68 crore GST in June, which is a 58 per cent growth over the same month of 2022. The growth surpasses All-India average.
PULWAMA
Three Bangladeshi nationals were arrested by Jammu and Kashmir Police for stealing a bank ATM in Pulwama district. The ATM was dumped in an orchard and the police used a bulldozer to retrieve the automated teller machine. The trio had stolen the ATM from JK Bank in Pulwama on April 8, and the case was being handled by a SIT. It was through the investigation of the circumstantial evidence that the police located the three suspects, who eventually admitted to the crime and helped police locate the ATM at Dogam Kakapora.
Two Kashmir women entrepreneurs, Nuzhat Qazi and Insha Mir, have successfully raised funding of Rs 75 lakhs through the Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneurship Development Institute (JKEDI) and Startup India.
AMARNATH
The Jammu and Kashmir police in Jammu finally unearthed a racket involved in the production and sale of counterfeit yatra registration slips for the Amarnath Yatra. The case is registered at Trikota Nagar police station in Jammu under IPC 420. During the scanning of the QR codes of the pilgrims, a number of fake slips were detected and on the basis of the information provided by nearly 430 pilgrims, police arrested Harender Verma (West Rohtas Nagar, Shahadara, Delhi) along with Daleep Prajapati, and Vinod Kumar. Basically travel agents, these people have been selling fake registration slips to their clients at Rs 3000, per head.
KPDCL is converting 57,000 power consumers’ metering set up from post-paid mode to pre-paid mode.
