Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 11: Former minister and senior Congress leader Raman Bhalla today termed BJP Govt’s reach-out programme claiming to change the destiny of the people of J&K political gimmick to befool the masses.
While interacting with prominent persons of Azad Nagar Ward-73 of Gandhi Nagar constituency today as a part of his door- to- door campaign to listen to the grievances of people of constituency, Bhalla said that like the much-touted Back to Village (B2V) programme, reach-out exercise will also be a flop show. He said such events so far have proved mere eyewash to divert attention of the people from the complete failure of the BJP.
Terming it futile exercise, Bhalla said, “It has been one year since Article 370 was abrogated what has been done since then. The BJP only knows to blow trumpets but does nothing,” he added. He said at a time when unemployment is on the rise in Jammu and Kashmir and people are not being paid their salaries, the J&K Government is busy in political events.
Former minister accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of weakening grass roots democracy under the garb of the ‘Back to Village’ programme. “The Government in the Centre has created an atmosphere of mistrust among common people under the garb of the ‘Back to Village’ programme by weakening democracy at grass roots,” he alleged.
Bhalla said the Government has given a big hype to the ‘Back to Village’ programme and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi had mentioned it in “Mann Ki Baat” event, but the former proved disastrous. “Sarpanches and Panches had high hopes when the ‘Back to Village’ programme was started in June 2019. Even to their surprise, issues raised during the event have not been addressed to date,” he said. “The MGNREGA payments are still pending in crores,” Bhalla lambasted the BJP saying the mainstream opposition parties and leaders are not free to carry out routine political activities due to restrictions and “vindictive steps” of the Government.
However, the BJP Government tries to engage the people in such “meaningless photo-ops”, thus keeping the entire administrative machinery especially field functionaries on the tenterhooks instead of attending to the problems of the local population. He said the insensitive BJP has failed in feeling the pulse of the people who are anguished over forgetting the promises made by BJP stalwarts from top in the high command down in the State leadership during 2014 Parliamentary and Assembly elections.
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