Former Minister and senior Congress leader Raman Bhalla on Tuesday said BJP has mastery of falsehood and fake slogans and pursued destructive and divisive politics in the country. He said that Congress always strengthen democracy and countered the anti-national and anti-democracy forces at the cost of sacrifices. He said Congress is the only secular and unifying force in the country which strengthened the secularism. Bhalla said that tremendous development had taken place during Congress regime in J&K which benefitted each and every section of society and these developments are visible even today. Since the BJP came to power all developments works have been put on hold. He said works of many important projects have been abandoned or delayed and the people are left to suffer. He attacked BJP for misleading people on every count and said that BJP will never succeed to implement its communal and divisive agenda. He said that J&K BJP leaders always pleaded that they are the well wishers of Jammu region but after getting huge mandate in 2014 Assembly elections, they compromised the interests of Jammu for the lust of power, but the people of Jammu are now matured enough to teach this party a lesson.He claimed that majority of people in Jammu maintained that no new developments but only facelifts of previous works were done in the area under BJP rule. BJP was in power at the Centre and in the erstwhile J&K State too, it was easy for the party to forward issues of common masses through their Government in J&K to the Union Ministry concerned, for mitigating the sufferings of people but they took them casually,” Bhalla said .He pointed out that there was total chaos and confusion among people as BJP leadership has failed to remove peoples’ apprehensions. “On the one hand, there is complete uncertainty in J&K, while on the other hand people are confronting with failure of the administration to solve day today problems”, he said, adding that most parts of the city are facing scarcity of basic amenities.
Congress is the only party having its vibrant presence in every nook and corner of J&K having chequered history of public service, adding that it will give every sacrifice for upholding the dignity and identity of the people of J&K. He also stressed the need for preserving the idea of India by promoting and strengthening its inclusive ethos. He said Congress has shown the way during most testing times of history by upholding the spirit of communal harmony, which continues to remain its political philosophy. He urged the Lt Governor’s administration for stepping up development and strengthening of grievance redressal mechanism, as people were suffering on account of various services. He also sought special attention towards employment generation, keeping in view disenchantment among the educated unemployed youth. He said that the first and foremost task would be to assuage the regional and sub-regional aspirations and putting the J&K back on the rails of development and progress. He accused the previous BJP dispensation of derailing the developmental tempo initiated and sustained by Congress dispensations. The thread left in 2014 is to be picked again to give momentum to development, job creation and instilling sense of security among the people, he maintained. He blamed the BJP for failing the people of J&K, especially those living in the border, remote and backward areas. The insensitive dispensation, which betrayed the people all over, virtually left the border dwellers in lurch.We will have to undo the wrongs committed by the BJP, Bhalla said while assuring the border dwellers that Congress was always with them, especially in the times of distress.
Reacting over Union Budget 2020, Bhalla termed the budget as highly disappointing, especially for J&K. There is nothing in the budget for unemployed youth, farmers, women, and students. The sectors that generate jobs have completely been ignored,” he said. There is no mention in budget on rising unemployment rate in the country and did not propose any measure to address the unemployment problem,” he said.He further said that Sitharaman refrained from speaking about the rising inflation in the country. He said that the Central government did not specify as to how it planned to double the income of farmers by the year 2022 and that there was no mention of rising farmer suicides. Budget 2020 proves that government is clueless on revenue and employment generation, wealth creation & it’s distribution!,” he asserted.In this budget there are no words on special package, no new initiatives or projects for J&K. We anticipated a lot for J&K since there is a double engine government at helms. This Budget 2020 is a reflection of discriminatory intent of the BJP government towards Bihar,” Bhalla said.The central government is selling other public sector undertakings on the lines of BSNL, Air India to its favourite capitalists at throwaway prices just to make money for election expenditure,” he alleged.”There is nothing in the budget for poor people…It has not said anything for providing common education for all…It has neither talked anything concrete to deal with the problems of unemployment, price rise nor took any measure to eradicate poverty,” he said.There is nothing Jammu and Kashmir-specific in this budget. We were expecting the Union Finance Minister to make necessary provisions in this budget to bear the cost of return of J-K based power projects by NHPC to J&K,” he said.He said there is no provision for investment insurance to provide security for the investments made by outsiders in the J&K.
While interacting with the people of Bahufort area of Gandhi Nagar constituency today Bhalla said that BJP got huge mandate in the last Assembly and Lok Sabha elections as well as the current Lok Sabha elections besides being the ruling party at the Centre and State being under direct Central rule, the entire responsibility lies upon this party to address the basic issues of the people. But it has literally failed to address the genuine issues of the general public. “Even after one year since Panchayat elections, the development activities in rural areas have come to a standstill due to non-availability of funds. Panchayats are virtually defunct and rural populace is crying for development,” Bhalla said.He alleged that Back to Village Programme’ of the Union Government is turning merely flop show as the works projected by different Panchayats and local villagers across the Jammu and Kashmir during Ist phase of Back to Village Programme’ in June this year could not be implemented till date.Panchayats are not being taken into confidence or involved in the programme. With which face again the officers would go to the villagers for the second phase of the campaign, he asked.He further alleged that since the formation of Panchayats in the Jammu and Kashmir, no funds were released in favour of Panchayats for development during last one year.
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