Reiterating the stand of his party–National Conference (NC) on full statehood to Jammu and Kashmir, the deputy chief minister Surinder Choudhary, on Saturday, said panchayat elections without statehood would serve no real purpose.
Responding to media queries on a visit to Gandhinagar Government Hospital, Choudhary said, “We demanded statehood, but they (the BJP government) tell us that it would be given at an appropriate time because when you have state status, panchayats are empowered in reality. If panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) are elected, we want them to be respected in a real sense. Ask the BJP what they did during their rule of 10 to 12 years. We had DDC chairmen, municipal mayors and deputy mayors, and municipal committee chairmen, but none in the bureaucracy, including deputy magistrates, bothered about them. Were they really respected?’
“Therefore, such elections don’t serve any purpose…for instance Omar Abdullah’s government. We don’t have any control over police, IAS and IPS cadre officers. What kind of government (administrative model) is this? The way injustice is done to us, we would not like representatives of PRIs, who are also humiliated and officials refuse to obey them. We don’t want such hoax elections,” he said.
He maintained that panchayats would not have adequate authority to execute development works effectively under the present system.
{{/usCountry}}He maintained that panchayats would not have adequate authority to execute development works effectively under the present system.
{{/usCountry}}Choudhary’s remarks come amid discussion over holding panchayat elections in Jammu and Kashmir. Omar government has been repeatedly demanding full restoration of statehood to J&K, which was reduced to a Union territory with the legislature on August 5, 2019.
Reacting acerbically to reports about his brother, Vijay Singh Choudhary, an inspector in Jammu and Kashmir Police, having been booked by the enforcement directorate (ED) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, the deputy CM again called it a “vendetta” perpetuated by some police officers, who harboured bad blood against his brother.
“My brother fought terrorism during peak militancy. He is the one who braved bullets of the terrorists. We are sons of a soldier. There are certain officers ‘who implicated him’. The time will come when they will be taken care of. What the anti-corruption bureau has achieved in the past six months. I would not like to go into it and leave it to agencies and the judiciary. We have full faith in our judiciary,” he said.
A local daily carried reports on Saturday that deputy CM’s brother has been booked by the ED in a PMLA case. However, Vijay Singh Choudhary rebutted the news on his Facebook account with a lengthy post and has sought a clarification from the daily.
“I call upon the concerned newspaper to immediately issue a correction and clarification regarding this false information. My legal rights remain fully reserved, and I am considering appropriate legal remedies, including defamation proceedings, in response to this misleading and defamatory publication,” read a portion of his FB post.
On February 25 this year, the anti-corruption bureau had conducted simultaneous raids at the residence of Vijay Singh Choudhary in connection with a disproportionate assets case.