J&K Budget blend of sophistry, wordplay: NC

In LS, Masoodi Says Agriculture, Health, Roadway, Education Sectors Left Unattended

New Delhi: The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference on Friday stated that the J&K Budget 2021-22 has failed to enthuse stakeholders, saying the budget was prepared with no public participation and consultation with stakeholders.

Speaking on the discussions on annual budgetary allocations to Jammu and Kashmir in the Lok Sabha, Party’s Member of Parliament from Anantnag Hasnain Masoodi said the budget has dismayed stakeholders whose grievances were not taken into consideration before presenting the budget. He said that the 5th August unconstitutional decision had pushed Jammu and Kashmir from democracy to unrepresentative bureaucratic rule.

“The people voiced their disapproval of 5th August decisions in DDC elections as the Party in power got mere 3 percent votes in Kashmir despite mobilization of all resources. This apart from the statistics of the last one and half year show that the ground situation has gone from bad to worse. There has been upswing in militancy related incidents, increase in militant ranks and of late in suicides of security forces personnel,” he said.

Asking the Central Government to shun the politics of arrogance, Masoodi asked the GOI to go for introspection and realize that 5th August assault has been a misadventure and achieved nothing. He voiced concern on lesser allocation for some key sectors like labor, employment, rural development, cooperative etc.

Masoodi while welcoming extra focus on health care and strengthening tertiary health care suggested that new maternity hospitals be set up at suburban entry points of capital cities of Jammu and Srinagar and not concentrated at one point. For Kashmir, he suggested maternity hospitals at Narbal and Pampore to cater to requirements of north and south Kashmir. He demanded Nursing Colleges at Kulgam and Shopian in addition to the Nursing College already proposed.

Masoodi also took exception to the import of Apple and termed it as a conspiracy against Kashmir. Demanding increase in commercial processing and cold storage facility to prevent loss of fresh fruit due to frequent road blockades, he expressed concern over total failure of Saffron Mission and refuted the claims that there was bumper saffron and labeled it as a conspiracy to get the saffron from other places introduced as produced in Kashmir to the detriment of local crop.

Responding to the demand for return of Kashmiri Pandit Migrants he insisted that the Government was not sincere as it wanted to keep pot boiling to harvest votes mischievously and use the community as a tool to record electoral victories.

Remarking on the acceleration of work on road and tunnel projects in Kashmir, he demanded concrete steps for construction of Dessan-Kapran, Simthan, Rajdhani, and Sadhna pass tunnels and release of 3000 crore rupees CRF to facilitate improvement in road connectivity. (GNS)