STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Congress accused the ruling PDP-BJP coalition government of failing to deliver the promises it made to the people of Jammu and Kashmir during and before the assembly elections. “The PDP-BJP government has lost the trust of the people, in a short span of 10 months, because of utter failure of the coalition to fulfill their tall claims during and after elections and their opportunist and contradictory stand on every important issue in the state,” former Minister and senior Congress leader Raman Bhalla said while addressing a rally of party workers in Nanak Nagar area of Gandhi Nagar constituency on Monday.
The function was organized by senior Congress leader Bhupinder Kour and attended by Kulbhushan Sharma, Onkar Singh, Parveen Singh, Ram Murti, Sukhwinder Singh, Sanjay, Sethi, Lucky Singh, Parveen Gupta, Babbu Choudhary, Bhola Singh, Bunty, Sushil, Manjeet and Davinder Singh.
Bhalla accused the NDA government of “re-branding” or changing nomenclature of pro-people and development-oriented schemes of the previous UPA government to take credit. Citing the case of MNREGA, Congress leader and former minister said the BJP leadership had initially criticised it to malign the UPA government but the Modi government had to make a U-turn and was forced to celebrate its 10 years of completion because of the remarkable success and achievements of this scheme and its popularity amongst the rural poor.
The BJP led NDA government has betrayed and cheated the refugees of 1947, 1965 & 1971 from POK and those from West Pakistan in the recent package announced by the Prime Minister Narender Modi for the state. The package of one time settlement of refugees of 1947, 1965 and 1971 comprising financial assistance/ex-gratia relief of Rs 25 lakh per family amounting to over Rs 9,000 crore alongwith several other concessions including reservation to their wards was recommended by the previous Congress-NC coalition government to the centre, after hot pursuit by the Congress and various organization of refugees.
Bhalla said that package of ex-gratia recommended by the Congress-NC government for the POK refugee families alone was to the extent of over Rs 9000 crores but the present centre government failed to grant the same in the recent package of Rs. 80,000 crores, which is more or less a packaging exercise of summing up the figures of revised costs ongoing and approved projects and the next five years share of the state, as the Modi government has gained expertise in packaging, he added.
