Alleging brazen disregard for the concerns of the educated unemployed and underemployed youth of J&K by the incumbent govt. Mr. Harsh Dev Singh, Chairman-JKNPP and former Minister regretted that discontent amongst youth was growing with each passing day after the abrogation of Article 370. He said that BJP led govt. had announced to create 50,000 posts immediately after Reorganization of J&K with absorption of the educated youth against the said posts on fast track basis. It was followed by another announcement in Budget Session of Parliament of 50,000 creations of new jobs. He however regretted that not only were the youth cheated in the name of employment package post Article 370 abrogation but the existing vacancies were also allowed to remain unfilled. “The only notification issued in the past few months by government related to 8575 class-IV posts and 1889 posts of Panchayat Assistants. Strangely the candidates above 10+2 qualification have not only been debarred from applying for class-IV posts but no posts have been advertized for them and for other professionally trained youth. The promise of around one lac jobs seem to have tapered down to a few thousand jobs with reservation to IB youth also having been denied despite assurances. The disenchantment amongst the educated youth having become all pervasive the apathetic approach of the govt. towards their concerns could prove disastrous” said Singh. He was addressing a press conference in Jammu today.
“Not only had the present dispensation deprived the youth of job opportunities in the new UT, the age relaxation in civil services too had been withdrawn creating huge resentment amongst the educated unemployed of J&K.. The change of nomenclature of adhoc/academic arrangement lecturers of schools and colleges and rechristening them as ‘need based teachers’ had further antagonized a vast section of teaching faculty in institutes of higher learning as well. It was distressing to note that rather than regularizing the adhoc lecturers who had been teaching in such educational institutions for years, they had been converted as need based to be paid on hourly basis. And all this notwithstanding the tall slogans of BJP leadership during electioneering of empowerment of youth several contractuals lecturers had terminated arbitrarily” , regretted Mr. Singh.
Cautioning the govt. against growing anger amongst the youth, Mr. Singh called for regularization of all adhoc, contractual and daily rated workers who had completed seven years continuous services as per the repeated assurances doled out to them. Endorsing the demands of the striking PHE workers, Mr. Singh regretted that the govt. had failed to awaken to their woes despite two of them having lost their lives during the course of ongoing protests during the last few months. Mr. Singh further said that all promises made by the BJP leadership with temporary employees of NHM and MGNREGA, needed to fulfilled before it was too late. He cautioned that any further betrayal with the cause of educated youth could have earth shaking consequences.
Those who joined NPP and spoke on the occasion included Arjun Bhalla, Varun Gupta, Ansh Khanna, Ankit Sachdeva, Akshyath Gupta, Ashish Anand, Dishant Chalotra, Aryan Gupta, Abhishek Bisht, Ayush Kumar, Akash Singh Manhas, Arjun Ghuman, Amandeep Singh, Sarbjeet Singh, Tanveer Singh, Sarbjot Singh, Guneet Singh, Divya Sagar, Rishab Mahajan, Gourav Gargal, Imran Khan besides others.