Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, June 1: Holding the BJP-PDP responsible for rendering the State Vigilance Commission (SVC) office completely defunct besides soaring menace of corruption including large scale bungling in several departments, NPP activists led by its chairman, Harsh Dev Singh staged a protest demonstration against the State Government outside the office of SVC here today.
The agitating protestors locked the main gate of the Commission to lodge their resentment. They were shouting slogans against BJP ad PDP and also Coalition Govt led by Mehbooba Mufti.
Lambasting the State Government’s nonchalant attitude towards the State Vigilance Commission having led to its redundancy, Harsh Dev observed that the Ministers and MLAs, particularly those of BJP were in notion that while the vigilance to check the vices was good for others, they should be left free and unquestioned. He accused the BJP-PDP Government of deliberately crippling the SVC in the State to end the regime of surveillance, scrutiny and observation and regretted that the Commission had become another white elephant with State Government spending crores in vain.
Surprised over the Government’s reluctance to initiate the process of appointment of Chief Vigilance Commissioner and two Commissioners to the SVC after the retirement of the incumbents, he revealed that due to the State dispensation’s vested interests the GAD had not even prepared the list of the candidates for these posts which unveiled the bitter truth that the Coalition Government was hell bent to kill the vigilance mechanism for saving its own skin.
Divulging soaring cases of corruption in all the departments involving corrupt politicians, Harsh Dev pointed out that large scale pre-mature transfers; encroachment of State, Forest and Custodian land; illegal construction of brick kilns and stone crushers, back door appointments of the SPOs, swindling of funds in centrally sponsored schemes like MG-NREGA, PMGSY, PWD, Power, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, etc were quite rampant and made headlines in the newspapers but till date no corrupt bigwig was caught and put behind the bars.
Demanding immediate appointment of CVC and Comm-issioners to the State Vigilance Commission, he asserted that Panthers Party shall expose the sinister coalition for its wrong doings.
Rajesh Padgotra, Pawan Dev Singh, Gagan Pratap, Parshotam Parihar, Pushpinder Singh also spoke on the occasion.