Shiv Kumar Padha
It has been a practice in India where the Monarchs, visionary and the subjects friendly kings used to roam about in the streets in the guise of a common man in order to have first hand information about the problems and sufferings of their subjects which were often not conveyed to them through their spies deployed for the purpose. Similarly many heads of states in the world have been following the same tradition in their respective principalities. The examples of Jens Stoltenberg the prime minister of Norway, Barrak Obama the president of USA and Vladimir Putin the prime minister of Russia are worth mentioning. According to news, the prime minister of Norway worked secretly as taxi driver in uniform in the streets of Oslo, Barrak Obama took his lunch in the restaurants of down town and Vladimir Putin drove bike on the roads of Moscow to have knowledge about the welfare of the masses. We the people of Basohli constituency are lucky enough to have their own elected representatives in the state legislative assembly.
The jurisdiction of an MLA is confined to one constituency, of a minister the whole state and that of an MP over the entire parliamentary constituency covering more than dozens of the assembly segments. It is often experienced that the ministers usually take interest in their own constituencies or in those which are represented either by the powerful or the influential MLAs, but as a result of discriminatory attitude of its own representatives towards Basohli constituency that it has always been isolated and kept out of itineraries of not only the ministers of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir but it is still missing even from the itinerary of its own sitting representative in the Indian parliament since 2014. Owing to the continuous neglect and discriminatory attitude of its own representative in the Parliament, entire Basohli Constituency has been reeling under number of problems like poverty, unemployment, scarcity of drinking water, health facilities, public distribution system, lack of connectivity, transportation and boosting the tourism.
Neither the non-local ex-MLAs have ever taken any interest in the development of the constituency nor the ministers have ever held any public durbars for the redressal of their demands during the coalition government in the state.
The constituency has never been granted any grant out of the CDF or from the MPLAD till date. Many projects like B.Sc Nursing college, Kendriya Vidyalay, Herbal garden, Industrial Estate, Fire fighting services, professional colleges, Heritage town projects, Solar energy project FM Radio station and promised railway line upto Basohli have either been hijacked by the powerful politicians to their own home constituencies or they have not been executed at all due to the lack of political commitment.
The tourism of Basohli is dying gradually due to the apartheid behavior on the part of the government. The groups of the central ministers sent to Jammu and Kashmir, under the public outreach programme never visit Basohli because nobody did ever suggest them in this regard. The visits of the state and central ministers have always proved beneficial for the illaqas they visit because the masses get an opportunity for highlighting their problems before them for their immediate solution instead of routing their written complaints which are often lost in the din or move with the snail’s pace due to red tape ism. But one fails to understand why Basohli is ignored by ministers during official tours except during the days of election. People of the Basohli constituency often fail to understand why the visits of their elected representatives are few and far between in spite of fact they have been given huge mandate. It worth mentioning here that Basohli constituency is also the part of Doda, Udhampur Kathua parliamentary constituency and deserves his love, sympathy and attention.
(The author is a
social activist from Basohli).
