Jammu dumped yet again by central dispensation: Harsh Dev

Pointing towards the visit of a 31 member Parliamentary Standing Committee (PSC) including Union Ministers and several govt officials to Kashmir to deliberate tourism promotion besides road, rail and hospitality infrastructure, Mr. Harsh Dev Singh JKNPP Chairman and former Minister regretted that Jammu had been dumped once again by the saffron regime. He said that reports appearing in the media had indicated that the central delegation would hold discussions with various stake holders and officers for giving a boost to economic activity in Kashmir which will be attended by the Union Minister of state for North East and PM’s office as well. “The delegation is further reported to hold meetings with representatives of various political parties in the valley to elicit their opinion relating to development of tourism, national highways, culture, civil aviation and railway safety which was a welcome move. But why the central team and PSC had again chosen to give a preferential treatment to Kashmir while ignoring Jammu altogether from its itinerary and that too in a situation when the ‘Darbar’ had shifted to the winter capital with the civil secretariat and all allied offices and major Heads of Deptts stationed in Jammu”?, questioned Singh. He was addressing a press conference in Jammu today.

Pointing towards a slew of measures announced by the centre after scrapping of the special status, Mr. Harsh Dev Singh said that almost all of them related to Kashmir without even mentioning the name of Jammu region. Pointing towards the visit of high level team of Union Human Resource Ministry to valley immediately after abrogation of Art 370, Mr. Singh said that it merely talked of expansion of educational facilities in Kashmir region including schools, colleges, skill development centres and professional institutes. The said team failed to even visit Jammu thereby drawing flak from educationists of the region, divulged Singh. “Likewise, another team of Minority Affairs Ministry led by its Secretary held a two days tour of the valley to identify the areas of the implementation of centrally sponsored projects. The team which was accompanied by top officers of Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karyakram (PMJVK), National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation (NMDFC) besides Central Wakf Council (CWC) discussed and explored the possibilities of “socio-economic development projects, provision of basic amenities and other measures” in the region, revealed Harsh. In the same way, he pointed out that the govt had announced a package of Rs. 28 crore for development of Srinagar on modern lines without considering the claims of Jammu for identical package. It further announced increase of Minimum Support Price (MSP) and other doles for Kashmir orchardists only besides constitution of a committee headed by Chief Secretary to address their issues without bothering for the concerns of Jammu farmers and fruit growers, added Singh. And subsequently, he said, there were announcements of special recruitment drives for Kashmir youth as Special Police Officers (SPOs) to the utter neglect of Jammu region youth who were being silenced by chanting the overriding mantra of national interest.

Likewise, the Union Minster Ravi Shankar Prasad during his visit to Kashmir last year had announcements Sports Stadium at Sopore besides a Fruit Market. The Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal during his visit to Kashmir last year inaugurated IIM Srinagar with announcement of introducing subjects like management development, leadership development, online executive development, Facility development, entrepreneurship development etc. 25 smart model schools were announced for Srinagar besides Sheikh-ul-Alam Chair in University of Kashmir and GCET at Safapora.

Accusing the centre of persisting with its policy of appeasement of a highly mollycoddled and pampered Kashmir even after scrapping Art 370, Mr. Harsh Dev Singh cautioned it to refrain from taking Jammu region for granted. He said that Jammu region suffered not only in terms of new development schemes post Art 370 abrogation, but its identity crises had further deepened in view of Kashmir alone being cited in all references to the erstwhile state without dogra land finding even a mention in such statements.

Mr. Gagan Partap Singh, State Secretary (JKNPP); Mr. Parshotam Parihar, State Secretary (Panthers Trade Union); Mr. Surinder Chouhan, District President (Jammu Rural) and Mr. Raj Pratap Singh, Provincial President (National Panthers Students Union) were also present in the press conference.