Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Apr 9: People’s Democratic Party (PDP) today said the Union Ministers should make efforts to improve situation in Kashmir rather than blaming the intelligence agencies for running the show in the Valley.
“It has become fashionable for people in power to talk like the Opposition. Jairam Ramesh is a (Union) Minister and should make efforts to change the situation,” PDP president Mehbooba Mufti told reporters here.
She was referring to comments by the Union Rural Development Minister as to how it was the spy agencies which were dictating India’s Kashmir Policy while the Centre had failed to heed the aspirations of the people of the State.
The PDP president said that while what Ramesh had observed was a “good thing”, it required a strong leader at the Centre as well as in the State to implement positive changes. “Mobile phone services were started in the State when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed took up the matter strongly with the Centre. POTA was also repealed during PDP’s tenure,” she added.
Commenting on the state of governance in the State, Mufti alleged that the present dispensation in power was known only for corruption.
“There were reports that some Minister has bought property in Dubai. Then there was a report that some Minister has grabbed forest land in Shopian and then we heard about the scandal in PHE and now the spurious drugs case,” she said and claimed that ruling coalition partners National Conference and Congress were shielding each other’s Ministers whenever there were allegations of corruption against any of them.
On the boycott of Assembly proceedings by her party during the recent budget session, Mehbooba argued that was the least PDP could have done after Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde outrightly rejected the demand for return of Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru’s body to his family.
“Omar Abdullah has degraded the post of Chief Minister. When Shinde slapped the State Assembly across the face by rejecting the sense of the House (Assembly) for return of Guru’s body, what did the CM do?”, she asked.
Charging that NC had always compromised the state’s interests, Mufti said that the ruling party had hung itself ahead of elections next year by digging up old issues.
The PDP president said the Government had failed both on the political as well as the governance front. “The political process started in 2003 has been stalled now for so many years. There is no progress on that front and on the contrary arrests and harassment (of youth and separatists) have become common again,” she said.
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