Srinagar, Jan 31: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Thursday slammed National Conference vice President Omar Abdullah over his statement on power projects, stating that NC should remain silent on the issue if they are not able to join forces with the PDP and other stake holders in seeking these power projects back from Delhi.
Reacting to Omar Abdullah’s recent statement in which he had termed the handing Ratle Power Project to NHPC a sellout, senior PDP leader and former minister Naeem Akhtar in a statement said that while PDP has from the very beginning been against such surrender of state resources and rejected the proposal of handing over Ratle when it was in power. The PDP Government had prepared for its takeover by the JK Power Development Corporation.
He added that it is ironic that now NC is trying to brazen out the loot it facilitated with the brute majority in the state assembly. “It began with the Indus Water Treaty- the first sharing of water between the dominions of India and Pakistan but the then Prime Minister of the state was at that time neither consulted nor did he find anything wrong in this. Then it started with Salal and ended with joint ventures under Omar Abdullah. In between when NC in 1996 came to power having 60 seats in the assembly, Farooq Abdullah gave away power projects as a price of Omar Abdullah’s continuation in the BJP led government as a junior minister,” Akhtar said.
Akhtar said that it is time for everybody to rise above politics and launch a joint campaign in all the three regions of the state because at the end of the day, it is everybody whether he is living in Jammu, Kashmir or Ladakh who is suffering due to the loss of state’s water resources.
