Congress hits out at recovery of waived off irrigation arrears
STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Hitting out at the UT administration for the delay in the ULB and Panchayat elections besides raising the issue of the recovery of arrears of waived off/abolished irrigation tax (Abiyana) from the farmers, JKPCC has said that BJP can’t face people and deferring all polls except Lok Sabha in J&K for fear of defeat.
Addressing a joint press conference JKPCC Working President Shri Raman Bhalla and Sr Vice President JKPCC Shri Ravinder Sharma said that it was congress party which raised the issue of reservation to OBCs in the ULB and Panchayats as per 73rd and 74th amendment, in a letter cum objections to the J&K Chief Electoral Officer on 13th Sept. 2023, demanding reservations to OBCs besides holding of ULB elections under State Election Commission (SEC) as per constitution. It was the result of the Congress party’s letter that the Govt. has woken up to consider reservation to the OBCs and the setting up of SEC for ULBs. But the delay in the matter is deliberate out of fear of defeat by the ruling party.
They said that as per law and constitution, the elections to these bodies were required to be conducted one month prior to the expiry of their 5 years term. While all municipal bodies including Jammu and Srinagar Municipal Corporations will complete their term by No. 14, the elections should have been conducted and completed by Oct. 15th but it has been delayed and deferred.
The Senior Congress leaders said the ruling BJP is afraid of facing all elections be it ULB/Panchayats and especially assembly elections, for fear of loosing, as LAHC Kargil elections were a trailor for BJP, the real picture will unfold after Assembly elections and the BJP shall be wiped out in Jammu region too.
The non holding of Assembly elections and the deferment of the ULB/Panchayat elections is a silent murder of democracy and the people are suffering a lot due to the autocratic style of the bureaucratic regime who are passing arbitrary orders
every other day at their whims and fancies. Citing a case of bureaucratic arbitrariness and anti farmer decisions of BJP Govt. controlled UT administration, JKPCC leaders questioned the recovery of the arrears of waived off/abolished Irrigation tax from the farmers, whereas it was PDP-BJP Govt. which itself had abolished this tax (Abhiyana) in the budget in 2015-2016. What right the Govt. has to recover the waived off/ abolished tax and even charge future tax when an elected Govt. had abolished the same.
Bhalla and Sharma lashed out the anti-farmers approach and mind set of the BJP Govt. and its proxy bureaucratic regime and demanded immediate withdrawal of these arbitrary orders of recovery of tax and instead grant adequate compensation to paddy farmers recently affected by untimely rains.
The Congress party demanded immediate and expeditious exercise for the reservations in all tiers of ULBs and Panchayats to the OBCs besides constitution/ extension of the jurisdiction of SEC for the conduct of early elections to the basic institutions of democracy as per constitution 73rd and 74th .
PCC general secretaries Narinder Gupta & Narinder Sharma besides Media Coordinator Neeraj Gupta were also present.