Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Apr 16: Former Minister and Pradesh Congress Committee president GA Mir has said that only Congress has done justice with the members of Scheduled Tribes and various other communities.
Addressing a meeting of ST Cell of the PCC here today PCC chief said that Congress is committed to provide equal opportunity to each and every section of the society in every sphere of life and reiterated that adequate share would be given to the Schedule Tribe people in the party set up.
He said it was Congress party, which formulated policies in the country for the upliftment of down trodden sections of the society and ensured them participation right from Panchayats to Parliament and added that party would continue to strive in this direction in future.
He asked the ST people to come forward and avail the opportunity of reservation in politics, education, service and other spheres of life in order to uplift themselves and change their life style. Mir stressed for further strengthening the Congress party at all levels in order to defeat the designs of communal divisive forces which raise their ugly head time and again to weaken the interests of the nation. He asked the chairman of ST Cell, Ch Mohd Akram (MLA) to constitute its committees down to block level.
Speaking on the occasion PCC senior vice president Sham Lal Sharma said that Congress is the only party which has policies and programmes for the weaker and down trodden sections of the society and provided adequate reservation to them. He said that ST people have to come forward in a big way to ensure larger participation in every sphere of life.
Earlier, Ch Mohd Akram said that the ST people, especially the Gujjars have always chosen Congress party of their `messiah’ because they know that Congress is the only party at the national level which can serve them better. He ensured the PCC president that Committees of ST Cell at District and Block level would be constituted soon.
Meanwhile, senior Congress leaders have accused PDP-BJP Govt of adopting vindictive attitude towards the opposition, especially Congress party in the State.
In a joint statement Congress leaders have lashed out at PDP-BJP Govt for targeting leaders of Congress party and adopting politically discriminatory and vindictive attitude out of political vandata in the matter of security cover and accommodation with a view to discriminate the Congress leadership to play the role of effective and vibrant opposition in the State. They said that party leaders including the State president GA Mir have been denied security cover and accommodation, which is against the democratic traditions, especially in this sensitive State. They said that the Govt headed by the party which always claimed to treat politics as battle of ideas is adopting such tactics against the opposition.
The signatories to the statement included Sham Lal Sharma, CLP leader Nawang Rigzin Jora, Dy CLP leader Aijaz Ahmed Khan, Mula Ram, Raman Bhalla, GM Saroori, Haji Abdul Rashid Dar, GN Monga, Ravinder Sharma, Rajnish Sharma, Balwan Singh, Dr Manohar Lal, Yogesh Sawhney, Shabir Ahmed Khan, Manjit Singh, Shah Mohd Choudhary, Manmohan Singh, Vikram Malhotra, Namrata Sharma, Faqir Nath, SS Channi and Hilal Shah.