Srinagar: JKNC North Zone president and Member Parliament (Baramulla) Mohammad Akbar Lone on Monday expressed discontent over the government’s move to station various pivotal departments in Jammu secretariat saying the irrational decision speaks volumes about the revulsion present ruling dispensation nurtures for the rights of people of Kashmir.
He said that previously the government had halted the Annual Darbar Move citing COVID-19, and that since then successive orders emanating from government have only added to the confusion on ground, perplexing administration and festering unaccountability within administration.
“The traditional Darbar Move is less climatology driven and more symbolic that affords a sense of empowerment to the people in the two diverse regions on either sides of Pir Panjal range. Regrettably everything which symbolized Kashmir’s due say in the administration has been obliterated and done away with. The incumbent administration has made Jammu the salient space of public authority and governmental action. Stationing all important departments in Jammu has put an end to the participative feeling of Kashmiri people. The step has added an insult to injury, as if stripping Kashmir of its special constitutional character wasn’t enough,” Lone said in a statement issued here.
Lone said that there is no convincing reason for the government to station these offices in Jammu permanently given the fact that all the departments traditionally moved to Srinagar with the shifting of Darbar Move to Srinagar.
“The move will fester alienation in Kashmir. Shifting the department enabled people here to seek redressal of their problems at their door steps. How will the poor and deprived visit Jammu to get their issues redressed? The focus of the governments should have been to assuage the problems of people resulting from COVID-19 crises; on the contrary the government is pushing them to undue trepidation,” he said while demanding immediate shifting of all departments to Srinagar Secretariat.
