news details |
|
|
| CM intervenes to salvage situation | | PRCs in schools | |
Early Times Report
Jammu, May 7: The interference of PDP leader and R&B Minister Altaf Bukhari in the functioning of the Revenue Department, which is also held by the PDP, has not gone down with Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. He has advised his ministers not to speak on issues which don't concern their respective departments and told them that Education Minister and party's chief spokesperson Naeem Akhtar alone is authorized to speak for his government. "Naeem Akhtar is the only spokesman of the government," Mufti Sayeed said while addressing a news conference after receiving the guard of honour at civil secretariat in Srinagar which opened after six-month with Darbar moving from the winter capital of Jammu to the summer capital.
What made the Chief Minister ask his ministers not to speak on issues other than those concerning their departments was the statement of Altaf Bukhari that Permanent Resident Certificates (PRCs) will not be issued in schools. Altaf Bukhari had on 4th May said strict instructions had been issued to officials not to issue any PRCs in schools henceforth. "We will issue the state subject certificates according to the legal procedure as per the past practice. There is no policy in place to issue PRCs in schools. Only 50 PRCs had been distributed, not issued, in schools. We got those certificates verified and found them genuine. But henceforth no PRCs would be distributed or issued in schools. Some officer might have suggested that we should distribute them at the school level, so we gave it a thought. Some 40-50 certificates distributed, but they were issued by the proper issuing authority. Ours is a new government and we may be a little inexperienced. So there may be some aberration, but we do not want to do anything which is against the law. There were complaints about the issuance of such certificates, so we thought to streamline the procedure," he had said.
It bears recalling that BJP Minister of State Sunil Sharma had distributed some 50-odd PRCs in schools in Kishtwar last week. Sharma represents Kishtwar constituency in the Assembly. The issuance of PRCs in schools had provoked protests in Kashmir with Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq denouncing the act and charging the Mufti Government with implementing the RSS agenda in Kashmir and granting citizenship rights to the refugees from West Pakistan. "the Mufti government was settling the West Pakistan refugees in the state through backdoor," they had said. Sunil Sharma had not paid any heed to this communally motivated criticism and had declared that PRCs will be issued in schools. It was with a view to conciliating the critics of Sharma that Bukhari spoke for the government and declared that PRCs will not be issued in schools. He was not competent to make such a declaration, as he had nothing to do with the Revenue Department. In any case, his statement has done the damage and offended the people of the state, especially of Jammu. His statement has also further embarrassed the already at-the-receiving-end BJP. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
