JAMMU: PDP-BJP Government is just two months old and so are its ministers, Ch Lal Singh included. During the brief 62 days period the new government has virtually done nothing extra-ordinary, not even ordinary, except generating commotion by releasing a secessionist, eulogising separatists and their mentor rogue nation for bringing them to power and encouraging anti-national sentiments in terms of allowing anti-India slogans and hoisting of Pakistani flags. On political front, the new government has antagonised the already discriminated region of Jammu by compromising with setting up of AIIMS at Srinagar. Again, on crucial governance front, the casual appointees have been retrenched, salaries of different segments of employees withheld, bills on account of various works carried out by contractors left un-cleared and the basic utility services like roads, power, drinking water etcetera left starving for want of maintenance.
Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu is on record having told Legislative Assembly that the new PDP-BJP dispensation has inherited Rs 9,000 crore liability from the previous regime. Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed only reiterated this concern the other day. The budgetary allocations for this fiscal are yet to be formally made available to executing agencies and there has been no forward movement in holding the District Development Board meeting to fix priorities This being the scenario, how come there is commencement of ‘major development initiatives and major developmental projects launched in all the three regions of the State’.
During his interaction at Heritage-Cum-Health Mela in Kathua, Health and Medical Education Minister Lal Singh is reported to have lauded the unprecedented support of the Central Government and liberal funding for taking up the projects. This is big news, which the people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh have been denied so far. What they know is that a Group of Minister had gone to Delhi to seek assistance from the Prime Minister, which has been assured to be examined but not released as yet. The new dispensation, which kept ridiculing its predecessors for going with a begging bowl to the Centre, has designated a Group of Ministers, headed by no less than the Deputy Chief Minister, to perform such job on regular basis.
Ch Lal Singh has come up with a startling disclosure about filling up of the vacancies of doctors across the State. He says the selection process of doctors through Public Service Commission is at final stage to fill up the posts in the hospitals. Doesn’t the minister know that the PSC is currently defunct? How can the commission, having the posts of chairman and all the sanctioned slots of members vacant since the past over five months, be in the process of finalising doctors’ selections? This is the level of understanding among key ministers of the PDP-BJP Government, which seems to have mastered in hoodwinking the public opinion. In the process, it reduced itself as a jamboree of immature politicians running the affairs of a sensitive state like Jammu and Kashmir.
In his enthusiasm of scoring point and misleading people, the Health Minister has gone several steps further by claiming that the ‘present regime has made tremendous progress in various sectors across the State whether it is health, education, horticulture, tourism, power, PHE, R&B etc for welfare and uplift of socio-economic status of people’. The minister has made a passionate appeal to the people to cooperate ‘executive’ (executing) agencies for smooth and timely construction of all the ongoing prestigious projects being executed under various schemes in their respective areas.
First, the minister should spell out the ‘major projects’ and ‘prestigious schemes’ which PDP-BJP Government has launched since 1st March 2015 and then he should drive down the capital city (leave alone the rural and urban areas) and see for himself their ‘revolutionary performance’ on pothole dotted roads. He will surely have to eat up his own words.