Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, Oct 27: Minister for Finance and Ladakh Affairs, Abdul Rahim Rather today strongly refuted the allegations made by Minister for PHE Sham Lal Sharma against him adding that it is an attempt to mislead the public opinion. He said the people are sagacious enough to see between the lines.
He said the attempts of polarizing the State on the eve of elections is not advisable at all as it is bound to vitiate the secular atmosphere of the State and create a wedge between the people of two regions.”By whipping up passions, Sharma cannot endear himself to people, who know these attempts were nothing but playing to the galleries”, he added . He termed the statement of Mr. Sharma as totally misconceived and far from truth.
Referring to the regularization of need based and casual labourers, Rather said that a Cabinet-Sub-Committee(CSC) was constituted under his chairmanship with a mandate to go into the extent/magnitude of the problem relating to casual workers i.e. financial, legal and administrative that may arise with the regularization of such temporary workers and work out an appropriate policy in this regard.
Rather said that a number of meetings were held by the Committee and concerned departments were asked to furnish details regarding such workers and a format was unanimously prescribed by the members of the CSC for the purpose to ascertain genuineness of the cases. But the departments did not furnish the requisite information as per the prescribed format for a pretty long time. As such the CSC was not in a position to finalize its report in time.
The CSC met recently and formulated a policy for regularization of the workers subject to fulfillment of certain conditions. The report of the Committee has been sent to GAD and the role of the CSC ended on submission of the report. Now it is the State Cabinet which has to take a call. Under these circumstances, the question of sabotaging the regularization proposal does not arise at all,” he added.
Referring to the allegation of ‘blackmailing’ leveled by Sharma, Rather categorically denied of ever asking him (Mr. Sharma) to regularize anybody in the departments under his charge. He said he has not got engaged even a single person on need/casual basis in R&B, PHE, Irrigation and Flood Control Departments. So the question of putting pressure for regularization of his favourites does not arise at all. He challenged Mr. Sharma to name any person in this regard.
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