Excelsior Correspondent
RAJOURI, Dec 18: People’s Democratic Party (PDP) president, Mehbooba Mufti has said the anti-corruption claims by the State Government are patently phoney in view of its track-record of protecting the corrupt and systematically disempowering the institutions of transparency.
Addressing a public meeting at Thanamandi in Rajouri, she said corruption has received patronage from the highest political authority, which is obvious from the death of Haji Yousuf in highly dubious circumstances and refusal of the Govt to even investigate it.
Mehbooba said the Government is resorting to patent lies by claiming that it had brought in either the State Accountability Commission (SAC) or the Right to Information Act. The accountability body was established in 2003, as one of the first acts by the then Government under a Supreme Court Judge, while Jammu & Kashmir enacted RTI as a law in 2004, when even the Govt of India was still to do it, she said.
Mehbooba said there are enough institutions and laws to tackle white collar crime, but it is the lack of political will and direction in the present Govt that has resulted in making corruption and bribery a norm rather than an exception.
The present Govt has made the SAC and State Information Commission (SIC) virtually dysfunctional, by denying them the staff assistance. The Chief Minister himself went against the SAC’s jurisdiction over his appointment of advisors, she said and added “if there was any legal infirmity in the law, the Chief Minister should have come to the legislature to rectify it, rather than use it for saving his skin.”
She said Omar Abdullah by this act brought the functioning of SAC to a grinding halt, with the result it has not been able to proceed on any complaints against the ministers and ruling politicians.
She said the Haji Yousuf episode did not cost only a life which remains unaccounted, but it heavily dented the prestige and moral authority of the Chief Minister, who should have been seen above board in order to enforce probity on his colleagues and administration.
She said it is a matter of record that a minister, whose foster son was caught indulging in malpractices in his examination, questioned Chief Minister’s moral authority to call for his resignation.
Mehbooba said the disregard for law in case of the high and mighty became obvious in the Cricket scam, as well, in which the Union Minister, Dr Farooq Abdullah, as president of the State Cricket Association, was accused of having drawn cheques from unauthorised accounts, money that was straight away stolen as was established by the documentary available in public domain.
The PDP president said the claim that people have been empowered to fight corruption is not misleading but sinister, as well. The present Govt has enacted rules in a manner that a private person has first to prove a case against a guilty person and only then the Accountability Commission can take note of that.
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