KL NEWS NETWORK

SRINAGAR

National Conference on Friday lashed out at Education Minister Naeem Akhtar for his continued delusions of self-righteousness and said the Minister’s exhibition of double standards doesn’t do justice with the stature of the chair that he has come to occupy due to his sycophantic service of the Mufti family. NC Spokesperson in a party statement said Naeem Akhtar should first “sit for a KAS exam today to justify if he deserved being conferred with a KAS in the past and should renounce his KAS retrospectively and give up his pensionary benefits if he chooses not to undergo this screening”.

The NC Spokesperson also asked PDP to clarify what supreme screening measures it adopted before sending uneducated individuals to the Rajya Sabha to represent the educated youth of the State.

“Naeem Akhtar is not the custodian of 16 lakh students. He is the custodian of the interests of the PDP-BJP combine – one he was given the task to justify despite his earlier moral lectures on not aligning with the BJP. This is the same man who accused NC of trying to ally with the BJP and then overnight became the person tasked with justifying the PDP-BJP nexus. So before he basks in his delusions of self-righteousness, he should introspect and wonder if his position in power today (given that he didn’t contest elections, let alone win one) is purely due to his ability to bend over backwards in the service of the Mufti family – the same family that has earned the historic disrepute of bringing RSS into the Civil Secretariat,” NC Spokesperson, Junaid Azim Mattu said.

The NC statement further said that the Education Minister’s only two achievements till now were: 1) He ensured that a cow got an admission slip for a BOPEE exam and 2) that the entire State was embarrassed beyond reprieve when pictures of mass copying in Kashmir appeared throughout the country.

“Beyond this, the Education Minister had done little other than taking camera crews along during his school inspections and then humiliating teachers in front of their pupils. Such attempts of self-promotion by the Education Minister come at a cost of the sense of dignity of our teachers and this unfortunate tendency continues unabated. This Education Minister rather than working with the teachers to improve the Education Sector is hell-bent on waging a war of humiliation on our teachers – which is extremely petty and unfortunate,” the NC statement said.

“If Naeem Akhtar thinks only 10% of teachers are ill-trained and not adequately educated, how can he generalize all of them as ill-trained professionals and parade them in front of examination halls? Since Naeem Akhtar has spoken about the loss of young lives in his diatribe – his act of parading teachers for screening is eerily similar to how his patron and boss Mufti Mohammad Sayeed started the culture of crackdowns and identification parades in Kashmir as the dreaded, murderous Home Minister of India. Seems like Naeem Akhtar can smell all types of blood apart from the blood that is on the cuffs and hands of his boss Mufti Mohammad Sayeed,” the NC Spokesperson added.

The NC Spokesperson said Nayeem Akhtar was the disciple of the biggest swindler of democracy in the history of the country and that it was none other than Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who has his hands drenched in the blood of 80,000 Kashmiris. “Naeem Akhtar is the disciple of the same Mufti Sayeed who is the patron of AFSPA in J&K, the architect of Gaw Kadal massacre and the architect of Operation Catch and Kill and Operation Tiger as the then Home Minister of India. Does Nayeem Akhtar not smell that blood of innocent Kashmiris on the hands of his master? Were those killed in Gaw Kadal not Kashmiris? Were those killed in the Handwara, Kupwara and Bijbehera massacres not Kashmiris? Before Nayeem Akhtar goes around sniffing the splatter of innocent blood elsewhere to score brownie points – he should go and see how his master’s hands are drenched in the blood of Kashmiris.”

“Before Naeem Akhtar runs wild with his self-righteous delusions of ‘reform’, let us remind him that if anyone has appointed unqualified teachers in the Education Department, it was his own master Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who did so in 2002. The NC Government, when it came to power in 1996 cancelled the appointment of a lot of teachers who had been appointed in violation of all qualification norms between 1991 and 1995. It was none other than Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who re-appointed these teachers – most without basic qualifications – when he became the Chief Minister in 2002. Where was the concern for reforms at that point of time? Did the education sector not deserve such scrutiny and screening in 2002? This is yet another instance of this party’s inherent hypocrisy,” the NC Spokesperson said.

The NC Spokesperson expressed amusement at Naeem Akhtar’s claim that the society was fully behind him with their support for his unceasing attempts to humiliate our teachers. “The society was also unambiguously against BJP forming a coalition government in the State. Did that stop Nayeem Akhtar and his party from getting in bed with the RSS? Where was his concern for the views of the society at that stage? The fact is that PDP today has gone against every single strain of dignity and self-respect in our society and for Naeem Akhtar to channel the ‘society’ to justify his delusions of self-righteousness – it must take a special kind of hypocrisy to achieve this feat,” the NC Spokesperson said while saying the party would support the principle of Dignity of Labour for our teachers.

“Naeem Akhtar’s diatribe against Omar Abdullah is nothing new – this man has a personal grudge against Omar Abdullah and Dr Farooq Abdullah as he was always the political tool of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in the State’s bureaucracy and misused his position to dole out undue favours to the Mufti family and their cronies – including some businessmen. There is clear proof in how innovative Naeem Akhtar was in transferring a prime portion of land to another PDP leader in Gulmarg. So his high morality cannot fool anyone. If he is so sternly against private schools and educating children outside the State – why doesn’t he tell us where his children were educated? His hypocrisy is as entertaining as his sycophancy,” the NC Spokesperson stated.

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