Sir,
The ease, the smoothness and the tacit handling of a situation (read crisis) is the yard stick of the measure of the governance and performance of a Government. Despite their best intentions, the coalition partners running the state affairs, have not shown the desired ability and maturity in handling the issues of public interest and unnecessarily gave rise to many controversies. Without going into details of such issues, the Tawi Lake Project in itself is a glaring example of creating issue out of non-issue. It was not because of faulty conceiving or wrong implementing of the Lake Project but simply an attempt to prove to be more loyal than the king. It is not difficult to fathom how this issue could crop up. The Minister for PHE Choudhary Sukhnandan during his interaction with the CM tried to avail the opportunity to highlight the previous Govt’s wrong doings. Mr Mufti was made to believe that Tawi Lake Project was ill conceived, badly implemented and there has been lot of loot-khasoot. CM in turn lost no time in issusing the statement about shelving the project without going into the merits of allegations by the minister concerned. Simple politics.
What happened after that is known to everybody. A big shock for Jammuites, especially under the circumstances, when they were ruled by the leaders, they thought were the best protector of Jammu’s interests. Luckily the bosses at Delhi grasped the situation quickly and were able to put the lid on this controversy. Mr Sukhnandan virtually had to do a volte-face in his hurriedly called press conference. This controversy speaks of inexperience of the minister.Rest everything has been well explained in your editorial, on this subject.
Yours etc…
Harjinder Singh
(Retd DFO)
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