KL Desk
Slamming the government for its inability to conclude even a single inquiry ordered into scores of killings in Kashmir, People Democratic Party patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed said the institutional system and administrative orders are facing most serious challenges under the present government which has added to the cynicism among the people about the kind of democracy practiced in the state.
While addressing a meeting of party workers in Shopian on Thursday, Mufti said immense damage was done to the system of governance as a result of deliberate subversion of the rule of law and denial of justice. He says the people of the state will have to take this challenge head on if the state has to retain any degree of decent governance.
Mufti said the incident of 2009 in which two young ladies lost their lives in Shopian was a nightmarish inauguration of the NC- Congress coalition which marked a complete reversal of the efforts to revive rule of law in the state. And so far the family of the victims has not received justice from the institutions of the state. He said this was followed by many more atrocities by the present government without any redressal even in a single case.
Though the people of Shopian put up a valiant struggle for justice and suffered in the process the government became more and more arrogant in its dealing with people throughout the state, reads the statement.
“If the previous NC government had introduced POTA, established SOG and unleashed all weapons of repression on the people the present government has reversed the entire process of relaxation with its anti people behavior,” Mufti said.
The Chief Minister’s announcement about withdrawal of FIR’s against the youth too have proved false which has resulted not just in demonization of a generation but has affected their career prospects as well, reads the statement. “Not even children are being spared and some of them have been booked on serious charges of waging a war against the state, have been paraded in handcuffs and jailed with hardened criminals” said Mufti.
The increased arrivals of tourists is being used as a propaganda tool for normalcy without paying attention to infrastructure building that is required to add value to the tourism sector, said Mufti. And the initiatives taken by the PDP led government had triggered a revolution in rural economy through significant systemic interventions.
“The abolition of toll tax and establishment of local fruit markets like the one at Shopian had led to sharp increase in horticulture returns and made the industry remunerative for the farmers once again” said Mufti. He however regretted that the present government had failed to carry the process forward and that the proposal for a cold storage system for Shopian had been shelved.
Mufti said the state of J&K had been converted into a begging bowl through the wrong policies of NC. Its resources had been sold out and almost entire power generation in the state had been gifted without any compensation, he said. If this has not happened the state would have been one of the richest in the country and could have served as the energy bank for the entire region.
