Alleging disregard for the issues, concerns and even sentiments of the common masses by the top J&K authorities especially the Advisors, Mr. Harsh Dev Singh, Chairman-JKNPP & former Minister said that hundreds of people who visited the Convention Centre Jammu to attend the public hearing session of Advisor Mr. K.K Sharma had to return disillusioned in view of unilateral cancellation of the schedule by Advisor’s office. He said that the Hon’ble Advisor’s schedule for public hearing today was announced with a great fan fare with his itinerary having been published in media as well, it was most regrettable that the same was cancelled without any prior intimation to the public, regretted Mr. Singh. Mr. Harsh Dev Singh who led a protest of the visiting people outside Convention Centre revealed that around 600 people who had come to meet the Advisor from different districts of Jammu region were extremely disappointed to note that neither Advisor came to listen to their problems and grievances nor any other bureaucrat or officer bothered to attend to the aggrieved people. Raising slogans against the government the protestors took out a protest march within the Convention Centre to ventilate their anger against the culpable apathy, neglect and disregard for their concerns by the helmsmen in J&K.
Pointing towards the issues of the visiting delegations, the general public as well as the employees, Mr. Singh said that several people from Doda, Ramban, Ramnagar, Kathua, Bani etc. who had come to meet the Advisor to apprise him about acute deficiency of staff in their respective schools, large scale attachments and neglect of village and remote area schools with regard to online studies in view of non availability of teachers. “Several employees had complained of suppression in the matter of promotions besides violation of transfer norms. There were further several complaints from non teaching staff who had been left out in the process of promotions while granting the same to their juniors. There were further grievances pertaining to inordinate delays in holding DPCs at various levels. Contractual teachers/lecturers and other regularly appointed SMAGRA teachers have been arbitrarily dis-engaged with none to listen. Further the transfers and attachments of RETs in defiance of norms was another issue which had failed to receive appropriate attention of authorities concerned”, asserted Singh.
Mr. Singh said that with administration maintaining a calculated distance from the common masses for the past more than six months in the name of Corona pandemic, the people in general were fast losing faith in the present system. He called upon the Advisors and other bureaucrats to take a cue from Lt. Governor who was holding meetings with public representatives as well as holding public darbars on regular basis. He cautioned the helmsmen to refrain from taking the public for granted. Private schools continue to cheat the students by charging huge fee even during the corona pandemic and without holding any class work.
Prominent among those who spoke on the occasion included Rajesh Padgotra, Capt. Anil Gour, Surinder Chouhan, Gurdeep Singh@Raju, Mohd. Shabir, Irfan besides others.