CM’s Kashmiri Advisor gets Dogri serial for his son

DD Kashir: Fighting Pak propaganda or generating heartburn in Jammu?

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

JAMMU, Dec 7: He contested elections on National Conference (NC) ticket in 2005 and represented Srinagar downtown area of Islamyarbal in Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) till February 2010. He was regularly paid honorarium as a public representative. But, that was not enough for Mubarak Gul’s son, Younis Gul, who fraudulently projected himself as a “private producer” and appeared in the government competition, like his father, in 2007-09, when he was NC’s elected corporator in Srinagar. By virtue of being son of the Advisor to J&K Chief Minister,Omar Abdullah, Younis Gul has now got DD Kashir’s Rs 24 Lakh project “Allhar Golli Vir Sepoy”---an 8-episode drama serial, not in Kashmiri but in Dogri language. Gul’s business firm Himalayan Communications has just begun shooting of this Dogri fiction at different locations in Jammu.

Once instrumentalists in Nawab Bazar’s Shah Dramatic Club, Mubarak Gul and Ali Mohammad Chralu (now Sagar) had begun their political career together when they floated NC’s youth wing, J&K Youth Federation, (later named as J&K Youth National Conference) and ran an effective election campaign for the ailing Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in 1977. NC swept the polls against all visible indications and trounced all---New Delhi-backed Janta Party, Congress, Jamaat-e-Islami.

In recognition of their hardwork, both, Sagar and Mubarak, were fielded as NC’s candidates in 1983 elections in downtown Srinagar. Both polled more than 80 to 90 percent of the total votes cast in their respective constituencies. These were the elections when JKPCC chief Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was defeated in both of his segments---Bijbehara and Homeshalibugh. Luck was a little choosy thereafter. Sagar was inducted as Minister of State for Information by Dr Farooq Abdullah in 1988-89.

Firebrand Sagar maintained rising to the heights but Mubarak kept craving for Ministry. When Sagar was completing eight years of his working as Minister with three Chief Ministers in July 2008, Mubarak got the charity of the “status” of a Cabinet Minister. He was designated as “Advisor to Chief Minister” and assigned the portfolio of chairing meetings with officials and collecting applications from the human ocean of Kashmiri job seekers.

Generation-2 of the NC’s “youth leaders” came to the surface together when Sagar got SMC’s ticket for son, Salman, and Mubarak grabbed the one for Younis. Both were students of law, though the junior Gul could never pass the examinations till he was caught copying at a centre in Jammu earlier this year. Sagar succeeded in getting Salman installed as Mayor of Srinagar but the young corporator Younis Gul began trying his own and his father’s luck in Doordarshan’s much-hyped ‘DD Kashir’ channel.

While Sagar and Salman kept tasting fruits of Omar Abdullah-led government, Mubarak and Younis secretly projected themselves as “private producers”. They submitted two different programme proposals and appeared in the competition of the commissioning of DD Kashir programmes at Directorate General of Doordarshan when the father was an elected Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) and the son an elected councilor with SMC. Their public office qualification is a known disqualification for private producers seeking contracts with any state government, Government of India or its subsidiaries.

As exclusively reported by Early Times earlier this year, five-times MLA and now government functionary of the rank of a Cabinet Minister, Mubarak Gul, besides his SMC councilor son, Younis Gul, had submitted their applications to Mandi House to get themselves empanelled as “freelance producers” for DD Kashir in December 2007 when both of them were peoples elected representatives. Retaining their public representative status, both of them appeared in the competition and an interview before DD’s Evaluation Committee in June-July 2008.

In October 2009, DD allotted 8-episode Kashmiri drama serial, titled ‘Azla Lon’ to Mubarak Gul when he was not only an elected MLA but also Advisor to Chief Minister. It was ultimately withdrawn when Early Times reported how the right of professional freelance producers and directors was being marred and how the salaried legislators and J&K politicians were being entertained as “private producers” by Doordarshan under the smokescreen of fighting Pakistan’s information war on Kashmir.

Mubarak Gul, however, managed to save his son’s Rs 24 Lakh project with the help of Director of Doordarshan Kendra Srinagar, Dr Rafeeq Masoodi, who was known not only for his patronage from the Union Minister of Health, Ghulam Nabi Azad, but had also projected himself as “Prasar Bharti CEO B S Lali’s man” in J&K.

Being a “Kashmir related matter”, all of the state and the central government’s integrity watchdogs, including DD’s internal vigilance wing, Central Vigilance Commission, J&K State Vigilance Organisation and Central Bureau of Investigation conveniently shut their eyes to DD’s multi-Crore fraud. Even Governor and Speaker of Legislative Assembly, who are normally regarded as the custodians of Constitution and Legislation, chose to ignore this broad daylight fraud that was brazenly condoned by the “intellectually immaculate” Chief Minister of the state.

[To be continued….]

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