PDP targeting Sagar to prevent Govt action against shopkeepers

Fresh questions: Who denotified Humhama land? Who issued permission to Srinagar shopping malls?

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Nov 4: Clearly coming to the rescue of over 3,000 shopkeepers and seeking to pre-empt Omar Abdullah government’s action against them in this capital city, principal opposition party, PDP, has decided to aggressively target senior National Conference (NC) leader and Minister for Rural Development, Ali Mohammad Sagar. Senior PDP leaders have publicly begun to raise questions with regard to the construction of the Minister’s “palace” at Srinagar Airport as also his son’s role in issuing permission to widely objected shopping malls in Srinagar when he was Mayor of Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC).

When Divisional Commissioner of Kashmir, Asgar Hassan Samoon, was taking a meeting with senior officials and Heads of Departments (HODs) today to review the progress in eviction of over 3,000 shopkeepers, who have allegedly acquired these high-value business premises in Srinagar through fraudulent means from their bona fide allottees against huge payments of ‘Pagdi’, senior PDP leaders, according to well-placed sources, were planning how to pre-empt the government action. PDP’s support to the ‘unauthorised’ shopkeepers could be remarkably significant in view of the forthcoming civic body elections in the capital city.

Sources revealed that in follow up to the growing liaison between the much threatened traders and the PDP, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s party has assigned the job of botching up the coalition government’s exercise to the former Minister incharge Housing and Urban Development, Mohammad Dilawar Mir. PDP is understood to have armed itself with “substantial evidences of some NC leaders’ maneuvering” and harsh questions are being drafted with regard to the Sagars’ role in raising, permitting and protecting scores of unauthorized structures.

According to these sources, PDP had collected details about a prime land that the senior Sagar managed to denotify for the construction of his palatial house at Humhama, on Srinagar-Airport Road. Budgam revenue authorities had reportedly notified the land, located outside the main entrance of Srinagar Airport, for the purpose of acquiring it for some government constructions. Pleading “security reasons”, government had notified the land and had not, for years, allowed any civil constructions around the high security airport. Sagar’s 4-storeyed palatial house on the same prime land is nearing completion and till date happens to be the only civil structure on the land surreptitiously de-notified by a former Deputy Commissioner of Budgam.

Sources said that PDP had also collected “sensational details” with regard to the former SMC Mayor’s role in influencing the BOCA in the matter of issuing permission to multi-crore business structures allegedly in violation of all rules and norms. These structures are either nearing completion or coming up fast in certain congested areas in Srinagar uptown.

Ignoring all objections from residents and civil society groups, SMC in the last few years has issued permission to construction of major business complexes near the erstwhile Lords Favour Hospital, Amar Singh College and other places, causing huge traffic jams and blocking entry to some private and government educational institutions. None other than a serving government official, presently posted as Chief Medical Officer (CMO) in Budgam, is said to be the owner of a Rs 15-Crore shopping mall coming up close to a National Conference leader’s business centre at the corner of Amar Singh College premises in Gogjibagh.

With full knowledge of Minister incharge Health and Director of Health Services Kashmir, the CMO has established a “private office” at the under-construction shopping mall and already completed a portion of the unauthoriserd structure and leased it out to certain parties against huge amounts of “initial premium”.

Ironically, permission to most of these complexes, with no provision of parking, has been issued when SMC had two Mayors from the NC, namely Ghulam Mustafa and Salman Sagar, but the Ministers incharge Housing & Urban Development, namely Qazi Afzal, Dilawar Mir himself and Tariq Hameed Qarra, were from the PDP. It is an open secret in Srinagar that all these permissions were granted clandestinely against huge payments of bribe money in violation of all rules and norms.

Data available with the PDP also mentions a large number of unauthorized structures that were supposed to be demolished during Ghulam Nabi Azad’s tenure as Chief Minister but senior NC leaders, particularly a Mayor, put his foot down to protect the beneficiaries of the near-total breakdown of the government system.

Even last year, when Salman Sagar was functioning as Mayor and his father a Minister in Omar Abdullah’s Cabinet, a high level committee had identified as many as 1500 unauthorised structures for demolition. Not only was the process of demolition blocked by some NC leaders, in league with some officials, but the government’s ill-intentions became evident when convener of the committee, Ishtiyaq Ahmed Ashai, was removed as Additional Commissioner of Kashmir and shifted to the irrelevant posting of Director of Geology & Mining.

The list of 1500 defaulters, who all managed to protect their unauthorized structures after allegedly paying huge amounts of money to certain politicians, is now gathering dust at Mr Ashai’s home.

An official press release today said that a high level meeting, chaired by Samoon, reviewed the progress registered regarding the eviction of illegal occupants of government shops at various places. “It was revealed in the meeting that notices have been issued to illegal occupants by various departments including SMC, Estates, SDA etc” it said and added that 1576 of such shops belonged to SMC, 1576 to R&B, 251 to Estates and the Government-controlled Wakf Board was the owner of over 1,000 of the illegally grabbed shops.

“The Divisional Commissioner directed the concerned departments to enhance the rent of the government shops as per the market value”, the official release said. Informed sources revealed that rent of more than 5,000 Government-owned shops in the capital city was being reviewed first time since these were allotted to now unknown persons decades ago and later sub let to different unauthorized persons against huge payments ranging between Rs 10 Lakh and Rs 90 Lakh each premises. Sources said that the rent was now being enhanced meteorically from Rs 300 a month to Rs 10,000 a month.

Today itself PDP leader, Dilawar Mir, raised questions with regard to the proposed eviction and alleged that “a senior NC Minister from Srinagar” was actually planning to allot these highly profitable shops to the workers of his party. In a statement, Mir expressed his astonishment that unauthorized structures were coming up on large scale in the Green Belt around Nageen and Dal lakes under the nose of NC Ministers inspite of standing ban on such constructions by J&K High Court.

END