Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Jan 31: Senior PDP leader and former Minister Naeem Akhtar today slammed National Conference vice president Omar Abdullah over his statement on power projects, stating that NC should remain silent on the issue if they are not able to join forces with the PDP and other stake holders in seeking these power projects back from Delhi.
Reacting to Omar Abdullah’s recent statement in which he had termed the handing Ratle Power Project to NHPC a sellout, Naeem Akhtar said that PDP has from the very beginning been against such surrender of State resources and rejected the proposal of handing over Ratle project when it was in power.
“It is ironic that now NC is trying to brazen out the loot it facilitated with the brute majority in the State Assembly. It began with the Indus Water Treaty then Salal and ended with joint ventures under Omar Abdullah. In between when NC in 1996 came to power having 60 seats in the Assembly, Farooq Abdullah gave away power projects as a price of Omar Abdullah’s continuation in the BJP led Government as a junior minister. NC handed electric power to Delhi,” Akhtar said.
He added that it goes to the credit of PDP that it made the people of Jammu and Kashmir aware of their rights which had been given away at their back, by NC since they were working only as power brokers and commission agents. It is after 2002 that these issues are being debated in Jammu and Kashmir whether it is JK Bank, extension of central laws or sell out of power projects.
Akhtar said that it is time for everybody to rise above politics and launch a joint campaign in all the three regions of the State because at the end of the day, it is everybody whether he is living in Jammu, Kashmir or Ladakh who is suffering due to the loss of State’s water resources. “We need to rise like one man instead of fighting between themselves. We have to get these power projects from the Centre and we must join hands to do that. It is the people of the State whether they are Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs or Buddhists who suffer from load shedding in cold winters of Kashmir and hot summers of Jammu or in remote areas of Ladakh,” Akhtar said.
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