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Mehbooba asks: How did Sagir report go to CM instead of PM?
Separatists upset but mainstream parties welcome 5th Working Group recommendations
Ahmed Ali Fayyaz
SRINAGAR, Dec 24: With almost all the mainstream political parties welcoming recommendations of the Prime Minister’s 5th Working Group on Jammu & Kashmir and the separatist groups categorically rejecting the same, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) President, Mehbooba Mufti, today sounded surprised over the fact that Justice (retired) Sagir Ahmed had submitted his report to the state Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, instead of Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.
Even as Justice Sagir has dismissed PDP’s concept of ‘Self Rule’ as utopian and claimed that the party never came forward with the much hyped document, Mehbooba Mufti came out with a positive reaction to the Prime Minister’s 5th Working Group (Centre-State relationship). At a specially organized news conference at her official residence, PDP chief described the recommendations as “a good beginning” but expressed her surprise that Justice Sagir had submitted the report to Chief Minister instead of Prime Minister who had constituted five Working Groups as part of his Jammu & Kashmir initiative over two years ago.
“This report was supposed to be submitted to the Prime Minister. Unfortunately, it has been submitted to the state Chief Minister before reaching the Prime Minister”, Mehbooba observed and said that she was surprised over this particular development. Nevertheless, she expressed her satisfaction over the fact that most of her party’s demands had been accepted. “Government of India should now implement the recommendations (of Justice Sagir-led Working Group) in letter and spirit. These should not gather the dust in New Delhi like many of previous reports and recommendations”, Mehbooba asserted.
Responding to the recorded observation that PDP had never submitted its Self Rule document, Mehbooba said that Justice Sagir had received most of her party’s demands. “Even as our first meeting with Justice Sagir remained inconclusive and we were kept waiting for the next meeting, it never happened. Rather than holding next meeting with us, Justice Sagir has surprisingly concluded his report and submitted it to the J&K Chief Minister”, she said. According to her, the Working Group has remained silent over a many demands put forward by the state political parties, particularly those related to cross-border relations, and it has just compiled a wish list rather than making clear-cut recommendation of restoring autonomy to Jammu & Kashmir.
PDP chief, however, admitted that her party had submitted to 5th Working Group only the demands which could be considered within the framework of the Indian Constitution. She said that PDP had not shared any of its demands, related to cross-border relations, with Justice Sagir-led Working Group. She said it was still reassuring that most of her party’s demands had been accepted.
Addressing a meeting of his party workers at Nawai-e-Subah complex, senior NC leader and Minister for Law, Parliamentary Affairs and Rural Development, Ali Mohammad Sagar claimed that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and NC’s patron Dr Farooq Abdullah had kept their word with the people and convinced Prime Minister’s Working Group on Centre-State relationship, over the need of restoring autonomy to Jammu & Kashmir in light of Government on India’s accords and agreements with late Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. According to him, Justice Sagir-led Working Group had called the bluff of PDP’s Self Rule concept and dismissed it as completely utopian. He asserted that, on the other hand, Justice Sagir was convinced of the merits of NC’s concept of Greater Autonomy and he had made unambiguous recommendation, asking Government of India to accede to the NC’s demand.
With certain reservations from CPI (M), most of other mainstream political parties have appreciated Justice Sagir group’s recommendations and demanded implementation of all these at an earliest.
Contrary to the predominantly positive reaction from mainstream groups, almost all the separatist political parties have rejected Justice Sagir group’s recommendations. Almost all of them from Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq to Shabir Ahmed Shah and Mohammad Yasin Malik have asserted in separate statements that implementation of Justice Sagir’s recommendations would have no bearing on the Kashmiris’ “freedom struggle”. They invariably said that “over one hundred thousand Kashmiris” had not laid down their life for restoration of Autonomy or Self Rule. While as most of them said that nothing short of “Azadi” (freedom) would be acceptable to the Kashmiris, Geelani asserted that the only solution to the problem lay in implementation of the UN resolutions whereby people of the “disputed state” would be asked to vote either for accession to India or for Pakistan.
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Shopian unifies separatist, Govt lawyers in Valley
Justice delayed by one day in all courts of law in Kashmir
Ahmed Ali Fayyaz
Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Dec 23: In two years of the outbreak of armed insurgency in Kashmir valley, High Court Bar Association (HCBA) had excommunicated over a dozen of its members on account of their appointment as Government’s advocates and standing counsels in 1989. Even as few of the appointees mustered courage to join and perform (under Police protection) what a number of the senior HCBA members themselves embraced till January 1990, most of them preferred life to profession. Legal practitioners in the two diagonally opposite camps didn’t see eye-to-eye with each other for years.
Eighteen years down the line, Valley has reached a situation where---for the first time---pro-Azadi HCBA would be publicly in defence of an advocate of Omar Abdullah’s National Conference-led coalition government in the court of law. A former constituent of the separatist Hurriyat Conference and an active organ of the secessionist movement in Kashmir valley since 1990, HCBA has declared to provide defence to all the six doctors and five lawyers who have been charged with making criminal conspiracy and fabricating evidences in the matter of investigation of the death of two young women in Shopian in mysterious circumstances on May 29th this year.
Those enjoying HCBA’s “full moral and legal support” include Government’s Public Prosecutor in the court of District & Sessions Judge Shopian, Sheikh Mubarak, who happens to be a relative of senior NC leader, Sheikh Mansoor, and his son, Sheikh Rafi, of Kachhdora village. Slain legislator Sheikh Mansoor as well as his son have been NC’s MLAs from Shopian. Mubarak had been appointed as PP by Minister of Law & Parliamentary Affairs, Ali Mohammad Sagar, in September---nearly four months after the volcanic “rape-cum-murder” of the unmarried Aasiya Jan and the married Neelofar Jan. According to the CBI chargesheet, Mubarak, his predecessor PP Mohammad Yousuf and President of Bar Association Shopian Abdul Majeed Dar were among five lawyers, six doctors and two civilians who harassed witnessed allegedly for the purpose of implicating “innocent” Police officials in the matter of rape and murder that had never happened.
Love-hate relationship across the ideological divide had shown symptoms of a remarkable change even earlier when Sagar’s establishment appointed one of the senior HCBA leader’s son-in-law as a standing counsel for Omar Abdullah’s government. Even in recent times, acrimony was so deep-rooted that the former HCBA President Zaffar Shah’s presence alongside then Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and a large number of pro-India politicians on occasion of the Golden Jubilee event of Daily Aftab at SKICC would merit a page one number in J&K newspapers.
What Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP did to Hurriyat from 1999 to 2008, Omar Abdullah’s party and government have done to both by playing ‘second-fiddle politics’, intelligently but perhaps dangerously, in the last one year. Jumping into the vociferous crowd, which essentially can not representative of the majority, has given the Chief Minister short term dividend of insulation against the separatist and the New Delhi-backed pseudo-separatist sting.
Political analysts insist that such kind of strategy was fraught with dangerous consequences, as the year 2008 has brought home to Mufti and his PDP. Hardliners like Syed Ali Shah Geelani have been triumphantly referring to the senior NC and PDP leaders’ statements in order to establish that Kashmir was a political problem and, one day in near or far future, it would have to be resolved “in accordance with the UN resolutions and aspirations of the people of the state”. In an oversimplification, they make the point that NC or PDP, both were “India’s night watchmen” who would have to clear out like Syed Mir Qasim did for Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah in 1975. This comes as brazen negation to Dr Farooq Abdullah’s ideology which he retained against heavy odds since 1990.
Remarkably again, Omar’s government put four of its Police officers, including an SP, behind bars for nearly two months in the Shopian aftermath and hired the country’s most expensive lawyers only to ensure that none of the detainees got bail from any court. Thus came a day when the Valley witnessed all from HCBA to Omar government’s advocates to the specially engaged attorneys pushing arguments against the Police officials and holding them guilty of “rape and murder” in Shopian. CBI has obviously failed them all by establishing the reverse.
It has been marked with interest that Omar Abdullah’s government was more loyal than the king in arresting and detaining those held guilty in the same matter by Jan Commission but those indicted by CBI---including a Chief Medical Officer and a Public Prosecutor--- are continuously retaining their positions and postings in the state government.
Meanwhile, work remained suspended today in most of the courts in entire Valley as lawyers stayed away from business in response to HCBA’s call against CBI’s act of “giving clean chit to criminals and framing those who had raised their voices against rape-cum-murder of Shopian”. Groups of lawyers held demonstrations in Shopian and few other towns to assert that they would take the Shopian battle to International Court of Justice.
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2 cops killed as militants attack Police in Pampore
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 22: Three years after killing SHO Pampore, Inspector Manzoor Ahmed and a civilian and leaving three more wounded in a broad daylight strike on a Police party, militants today attacked another Police party on the same spot at Kadalbal in Pampore, 14 Kms from here. Two Police personnel died and one more was battling for life at a hospital here even as security forces launched a massive search operation in the saffron-rich township on Srinagar-Jammu national highway.
Informed sources in south Kashmir told Early Times that three Phiran-clad gunmen, believed to be militants, opened fire on a Police naka at Kadalbal, Pampore, at 1845 hours this evening. Caught unawares, Policemen proved to be lame ducks for the guerrillas who fired indiscriminately for about five minutes and managed to escape before Police and security forces later launched a search operation. Sources said that three of the four Policemen targeted by the militants got critically injured. They were identified as selection grade constable Farooq Ahmed of Gulab Bagh, Zakoora (Ganderbal), SPO Khursheed Ahmed of Hariparigam (Awantipore) and constable Abdul Hameed of Sangrama (Sopore).
Even as colleagues rushed to their rescue and help quickly from Police Station Pampore and all the three injured were evacuated, militants successfully made good their escape. Rushed to Srinagar, two of the critically injured personnel, namely selection grade constable Farooq Ahmed and SPO Khursheed Ahmed, succumbed to injuries later tonight at SKIMS, Soura. Constrable Abdul Hameed, who has been hit in his leg, was battling for life at Bone & Joint Hospital at midnight.
SP Awantipore, Bashir Ahmed Khan, confirmed the death of two Police personnel and said that the third one was responding to treatment at Bone & Joint Hospital in Srinagar. He said that the “Phiran-clad militants”, who carried AK-56 rifles, had escaped under the cover of darkness but were suspected to be still hiding in the same locality. Police and security forces have launched a joint house-to-house operation in search of the militants though there were immediately no substantial clues with regard to their place of hiding, he said.
On December 30, 2006, militants had gunned down SHO Pampore, Inspector Manzoor Ahmed, alongwith a civilian, and left three others wounded in an identical but broad daylight strike on the same spot. Two days ago, suspected militants had struck in Awantipore and Rajpura localities of the same Pulwama district in south Kashmir and gunned down two civilians, including a ruling National Conference (NC) activist.
Militants’ deadly attack on Police tonight came in weeks of over half-a-dozen Police and paramilitary personnel getting killed in point blank strikes in the capital city of Srinagar. In September earlier, militants had targeted a vehicle of District Police Pulwama near Srinagar Central Jail with a massive IED blast, killing eight of them on spot. Notwithstanding the refrain of improvement in situation from all sides and the politicians demanding withdrawal of troops from Jammu & Kashmir, a number of civilians and armed forces personnel have been eliminated by suspected militants this year in firing and IED blasts. Figures are no match to those of 1990-2002, but a number of people have also sustained injuries in different militant strikes, particularly grenade attacks in Kashmir valley this year.
Meanwhile, Srinagar Police today claimed to have arrested three militants of Hizbul Mujahideen. They were identified as Rafiq Magray aliads Aadil, Mohammad Ramzan alias Ibrahim and Iqbal Haroon alias Muzaffar. A Police spokesman said that arms and ammunition were recovered from the three militants. Independent sources, however, described it as a routine incident of surrender.
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Tata Indicom among 50 major defaulters on By-pass
SMC shuts eyes to largescale violation of master plan in Srinagar
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 19: Proud of its unique regard to ethics, Tatas have given an all new interpretation to their fundamental code in Kashmir as one of the companies of the group has established a major facility in Srinagar inside a structure that has been raised in total violation of master plan and without No Objection Certificates (NOCs) from different government departments. This has been identified by Srinagar Development Authority (SDA) as one among 50 major violations on the National Highway By-pass in the summer capital.
Highly placed sources in the state government revealed to Early Times that a Srinagar-based businessman had applied for raising and running a ‘guesthouse’ for the purpose of tourism promotion three years ago. However, being a violation to the master plan, which has reserved this area strictly for non-commercial purpose, different departments did not issue NOCs and consequently the applicant failed to get permission from SMC’s BOCA.
Even as the businessman could not get permission, he raised a major 3-story concrete complex few yards from the Bypass and did not maintain distance as stipulated for authorized structures on the highway. In addition to establishing show-rooms, service centres and other business offices of a major automobile company at Hyderpora, the businessman roped in Tata Teleservices operators who set up Tata Indicom’s master control facility on the premises with expenditure of over Rs 3.50 cr on it. A Tata official is said to have taken extraordinary personal interest in setting up the facility at this complex as he has been notoriously in league with certain SMC authorities on behalf of the owner of the complex.
Sources said that Tata Indicom’s J&K Chief Operating Officer (COO) submitted fake and fraudulent documents to his corporate headquarters with the false certificate that the building owner had lawfully obtained permission from the authorities. Sources in Ministry of Housing & Urban Development revealed that involvement of top SMC mandarins has been established and legal action was being initiated in the matter not only against the building owner but also the companies who have established their offices in the unauthorized complex.
Officials in Tata Indicom, who did not wish to be identified, confirmed that their J&K COO had brought disrepute to Tata Group by setting up facility at an unauthorized building. They, however, said that due to the building owner’s failure to get necessary permission from BOCA for a commercial facility, Tata Indicom decided to set up a makeshift facility at Chhanapora.
According to these sources, nearly 50 of such major defaulters, who have violated norms and master plan, have been identified on either side of the By-pass from Nowgam to Shalteng.
SDA Vice Chairman, Syed Kifayat Hussain Rizvi, claimed to have no knowledge of the violation done by Tata Indicom in league with the building owner and SMC authorities, but he admitted that Government had taken extremely serious note of largescale violation of master plan in Srinagar. He said that a high-level committee had, lately, identified and mapped all unauthorized structures in the capital city. “Hyderpora Bypass area is strictly reserved for residential purpose. There is no question of condoning such violations as it would be viewed as undue and objectionable favour to businessmen and owners of commercial premises”, he said.
Yet another SDA official said that there was no justification to raising such commercial complexes, particularly those which have come up in total violation of master plan and building operation rules after Mufti Mohammad Sayeed government’s much-hyped demolition drive in the last five years.
Residents of Hyderpora sounded pessimistic. “There is no question of dismantling these illegal structures. Officers and new Ministers will only blackmail the owners and become silent after taking money from them. They know that there is no accountability in the system”, said Ghulam Mohammad Lone, a schoolteacher.
Sources revealed that SMC officials, particularly Chief Khilafwarzi Officer, was hand-in-glove with owners and operators of commercial complexes who were enjoying one or the other political clout but still paying huge amounts of money to the authorities. They said that a Jammu-based politician-businessman was currently raising the 5th floor of his under-construction shopping mall at Barbarshah. Taking undue advantage of an old flour mill close to his site, this businessman had managed to get permission to construction of a 4-storeyed commercial complex in the area reserved for residential purpose. In full view of public and the authorities, he is now raising the 5th floor without any permission from BOCA.
According to these sources, it had become a modus operandi for the SMC authorities and the businessmen to raise unauthorized structures and condone the same later with the payment of small fines.
Commissioner Srinagar Municipal Corporation, Tufail Matoo, and Mayor of Srinagar, Salman Ali Sagar, were continuously found either switched off or not reachable.
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CBI report on Shopian is a fraud, DM is lying on troops reduction: Mirwaiz
Nobody in NC, Cong supports Chidambaram in his snub of separatists
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 18: With almost entire separatist as well as mainstream opposition joining hands to discredit CBI’s findings and chargesheet on Shopian and nobody in the two ruling coalition parties---National Conference and Congress---providing any background music to Home Minister P Chidambram, Chairman of a faction of pro-Azadi Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, today dismissed the central agency’s exercise as a sham. The cleric-politician, who looked receptive to the Centre’s suggestion of secret dialogue until yesterday, has also told his Friday congregation audience that Defence Minister A K Antony’s claim of troops reduction in the Valley was patently false.
Even as nobody in the ruling coalition has supported Chidambram in attributing motives to a many separatist and mainstream politicians’ criticism of the CBI report and Omar Abdullah-led government deciding not to take any administrative action against the officials accused of criminal conspiracy by the central agency, Mirwaiz today came out with veritable bombshell on the ‘quiet diplomacy’ on Kashmir. In his weekly sermon at the Friday prayers congregation at Jamia Masjid, Mirwaiz alleged that CBI’s three-month-long investigation into the death of two young women---17-year-old Aasiya and 25-year-old Neelofar---had turned out to be a ‘farcical exercise’.
“India has been telling lies with regard to Jammu & Kashmir since 1947. From UN resolutions to holding a fair investigation into the Shopian tragedy, India has never fulfilled any promise. Like the investigations on many massacres, recent one on Shopian has turned out to be a fraud. We completely reject CBI’s investigation as it has exonerated the criminals and framed innocent people who raised their voices against the rape and murder of two of our sisters in Shopian”, Mirwaiz told the gathering. He said that New Delhi had completely lost its credibility in Kashmir and it could be restored with fulfilling the promises made to the Kashmiris from time to time.
“CBI report on Shopian has been made according to India’s national interest. It has done no justice to the two victims of rape and murder and their bereaved families”, Mirwaiz added. While calling it a human tragedy and asserting that there was no scope for making any politics on the Shopian incident, Mirwaiz asked Government of India to assign the investigation to an international organization like Amnesty International and Asia Watch. He said that in absence of such a “credible investigation”, Hurriyat (Mirwaiz) would fully support any agitation called by Majlis-e-Mashawarat Shopian. He wished MMS to take the Hurriyat into confidence with regard to any programme on Shopian.
After treating Chidambaram’s appreciation of the CBI report on Shopian with contempt, Mirwaiz turned towards A K Antony and asserted that the Indian Defence Minister’s claim of having withdrawn two divisions of Army from Jammu and Kashmir was also far from truth. According to him, there was no evidence of any soldier having been removed on the ground. “If it’s true, would the Defence Minister tell us wherefrom the soldiers have moved and what exactly was there destination”.
During the course of his sermon, Mirwaiz sought to make it clear that Hurriyat could not show any enthusiasm for a suggestion of dialogue process until it was supported by “much needed confidence building measures” from New Delhi. “We are not shying away from talks but these have got be meaningful. There has to be a specific Kashmir agenda”, he added in his expression of secondary thoughts on the “quiet diplomacy” and “secret talks”. He emphasized that implementation of Hurriyat’s 5-point formula, that includes withdrawal of troops and release of all political detainees, would create a congenial atmosphere for a dialogue process with New Delhi.
Saluting the Kashmiri youth for being “enthusiastic for freedom”, Mirwaiz, advised the youngsters not to smudge the separatist movement with stone pelting “on our own people and properties”.
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Omar Govt not for action against CBI’s accused in Shopian
Advocate Mubarak appointed as PP in Sept, Dr Sofi as CMO Pulwama
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 16: In marked contrast to its quick action in June and July this year, Omar Abdullah-led coalition government is, of now, holding the opinion of not placing any of the accused officials under suspension even as Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has chargesheeted 13 persons, including six doctors and one Public Prosecutor (PP), for ‘criminal conspiracy and fabricating evidence’ in the matter of criminal exploitation of the death of two young women in Shopian.
Highly placed official sources revealed to Early Times today that Government had immediately no plans to take any administrative action, like termination of services or suspension, against any of the doctors and a PP found guilty of criminal conspiracy and criminal exploitation of the death of two women in CBI’s three-month-long investigation. After completing its investigation, CBI has exonerated all the four Police officials, accused of destroying evidences by Special Investigating Team (SIT) of J&K Police, and filed interim chargesheet against six doctors and five lawyers in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Srinagar on December 10th.
“As of now, we have no instructions to place any of the doctors under suspension”, a bureaucratic source in Ministry of Health said. Officials in the Ministry of Law & Parliamentary Affairs said that Advocate Sheikh Mubarak, who had been appointed as Public Prosecutor in District & Sessions Court Shopian my Mr Ali Mohammad Sagar in September, had been asked to continuously pursue the state’s cases at his place of posting. A relative of NC’s former MLAs, late Sheikh Mansoor and his son Sheikh Rafeeq, Mubarak is one among the six lawyers who have been charged with criminal conspiracy and fabricating of evidence for the purpose of framing innocent persons by the CBI.
This is reportedly for the first time in the state’s judicial history that a PP, supposed to pursue state’s cases in District & Sessions Court, has been charged with such crime. Even his predecessor, appointed as PP by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s government in 2003, is facing the same charges in the CBI challan. Four other lawyers facing similar charges include President of Bar Association Shopian, Advocate Abdul Majeed Mir.
According to informed sources, CBI has obtained call detail record, including taped conversations, of all the six lawyers and established charges against them with the additional corroboration of this material evidence. Their voice samples have been obtained during their questioning at CBI’s camp office in Humhama last month and sent for a detailed analysis and verification to Central Forensic Laboratory Hyderabad. CBI is likely to produce supplementary evidence in its designated court in Srinagar after receiving a report from CFSL Hyderabad later this month.
Almost all the doctors associated with post mortem procedure of 17-year-old Aasiya Jan and 25-year-old Neelofar Jan, whose dead bodies had been found in mysterious circumstances in Rambiara nullah of Shopian on May 30th this year, have also landed in trouble. CBI has framed and filed charges against six of such doctors.
While as Dr Nighat Shaheen, Assistant Surgeon B Grade, and Dr Bilal of Dalal, Assistant Surgeon, had been placed under suspension in the wake of findings of Jan Commission report in July, Government had not initiated any action against four other doctors of the team. Then Chief Medical Officer (CNO) Pulwama, Dr Ghulam Mohammad Paul, has now retired from service but three others---Dr Ghulam Qadir Sofi, Dr Mohammad Maqbool Mir and Dr Nazia Hassan--- are still posted and serving in the same area.
Dr Maqbool Mir is continuously working as District Health Officer (DHO) Pulwama. Dr Ghulam Qadir Sofi, then Dy CMO, has been elevated to the senior rank of CMO Pulwama by Omar Abdullah’s government as late as in September this year. In the wake of CBI filing serious charges of criminal conspiracy and fudging of post mortem and per vaginal of the two women, Government is now in a quandary---whether to place them under suspension or ignore the CBI chargesheet. According to sources, Government does not want to take any action that would suggest approval to the CBI report which has been vociferously questioned and disputed by the separatist as well as mainstream Opposition.
On the other hand, Government’s inaction over CBI report, by way of placing the doctors under suspension and terminating the services of the PP, would raise questions over its quick action previously against the four Police officials, one scientific officer of FSL and two doctors before and after Jan Commission report. As of now, Government’s tension in the burning issue is receding fast for the Valley has not come out with a serious reaction and the separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani has left for New Delhi today on a long winter vacation.
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Sopian women were neither raped nor murdered: CBI
Clean chit to all 4 Police officials
Chargesheet filed against 6 docs, 5 lawyers, including Sagar-appointed PP
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 14: Ending a half-year-long drama in Kashmir valley, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today told Jammu & Kashmir High Court that the married Neelofar Jan and her unmarried sister-in-law, Aasiya Jan, of Shopian, had neither been raped nor murdered. While claiming that the two young women had died due to asphyxia after drowning in Rambiara on May 29 this year, CBI has given clean chit to all the four Police officials who had been booked earlier by a Special Investigating Team (SIT)( of J&K Police, and also filed charges of criminal conspiracy and fabrication of evidence against 13 persons who include a Public Prosecutor (PP) of Omar Abdullah’s government, his predecessor appointed by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP-led coalition government, President of Bar Association Shopian, one Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and five other doctors.
CBI team, headed by DIG Satish Golchha, appeared before a Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice Barin Ghosh and Mr Justice Yaqoob Mir, on the fixed date of hearing of the PIL today and revealed that the agency had completed investigation into the alleged rape-cum-murder of two young women of Shopian within the period of two months as earlier stipulated by the court on October 13th. It informed the DB that CBI’s nearly three-month-long investigation, which progressed with continuous support of over a dozen medical and forensic experts from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) New Delhi and Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) New Delhi, had established that both the females had died due to asphyxia after drowning in Ramiara nullah of Shopian on the evening of May 29th this year.
According to the CBI findings, neither of the two young women had been either raped or murdered, as widely alleged by family members, residents of Shopian, civil society groups, media and politicians. It held as many as 13 persons guilty of creating a false criminal case, criminal conspiracy and fabrication of evidence and revealed that a chargesheet against them all had been filed in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) of Srinagar, which also happens to be the designated court for all CBI cases in Kashmir valley. It provided a copy of the chargesheet and detailed findings of its investigation to the DB and sought permission for an audio-visual PowerPoint presentation in the chambers.
Thereupon, judges hearing the PIL sought a reaction from Neelofar Jan’s husband and Aasiya Jan’s brother, Shakil Ahmed Ahangar, who said that he would not approve “further stripping” of his wife and sister. He said that CBI had fraudulently established it a case of death by drowning even as, according to him, entire Shopian knew that both had been sexually assaulted and subsequently done to death. He said that he had no faith in CBI as it was “India’s biggest agency” that had been assigned with the task of giving clean chit to the criminals. Court provided a copy of the chargesheet to Ahangar and members of Majlis-e-Mashawarat Shopian and asked them to file objections, if any, in the third week of February 2010. They were told that a closer date of hearing was not possible due to the forthcoming winter vacations in the High Court.
Later in the day, DIG CBI Satish Golshha and Dr Dogra of AIIMS gave a PowerPoint presentation before the DB from 1400 hours to 1630 hours which was also witnessed by Principal Secretary to Chief Justice, Registrar Judicial, Advocate General Mohammad Ishaq Qadiri, CBI’s counsel Anil Bhan and others. CBI subsequently arranged a similar presentation for mediapersons at its camp office and Kashmir headquarters at Humhama.
CBI has charged the thirteen accused with making criminal conspiracy (section 120-B), framing public servants with false documents (167), fabricating evidence in judicial process (193), fabricating evidence that can lead to capital punishment of an innocent person (194) and fabricating evidence that can lead to life imprisonment of an innocent person (195-A). It has concluded that the accused had created a false criminal case against those who had not committed any crime.
Those given a clean chit by CBI today include suspended and attached SP of Shopian Javed Iqbal Matoo, Dy SP Rohit Baskotra, SHO Shopian Inspector Shafeeq Ahmed and Sub Inspector Gazi Abdul Kareem.
Six doctors against whom CBI has filed the chargesheet include Dr Nighat Shaheen Chiloo (who had collected false vaginal smear from a number of women and sent it to CFSL), Chief Medical Officer Dr Ghulam Qadir Sofi, Dr Mohammad Maqbool Mir, Dr Ghulam Mohammad Pal, Dr Bilal Ahmed Dalal and Dr Nazia Hassan. These doctors had been part of the team that claimed to have conducted post mortem and per vaginal of the women on May 30th. Dr Nighat had expeditiously told the crowds that she had found both the women as victims of gang rape and murder.
CBI has also filed the chargesheet against five Shopian-based advocates who include President of Bar Association of Shopian, Advocate Abdul Majeed Mir, Advocate Sheikh Mubarak who was appointed as Public Prosecutor by Omar Abdullah’s government in September this year and assigned with the responsibility of pleading the state’s cases in the court of District and Sessions Judge Shopian, his predecessor Adv Mushtaq Ahmed Gatoo, who had been appointed as PP at Shopian by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s government, Adv Mohammad Yousuf Bhat and Adv Mohammad Akltaf Mahand.
In addition to six doctors and five lawyers, CBI has also filed the chargesheet against Shakil Ahmed Ahangar’s cousin, Zahoor Ahmed Ahangar, and another civilian, namely Ali Mohammad Sheikh, both residents of Shopian.
Members of Majlis-e-Mashawarat Shopian rejected the CBI findings, burned copies of the report and shouted anti-CBI slogans outside on the court premises with the allegation that the central investigating agency had fraudulently exonerated the “criminals” and framed those who had raised their voices against the “twin rape-cum-murder”. A CBI spokesperson in New Delhi said in his reaction to the allegation that CBI had completed its investigation with total professionalism, produced the challan before court and it was only for the judge to see whether it was wrong or right.
MMS in protest called for Valley-wide shutdown on Tuesday. It was immediately supported by President of High Court Bar Association, Adv Mian Abdul Qayoom, Hurriyat Conference (G) Chairman, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Hurriyat (Mirwaiz) leader Shabir Ahmed Shah, JKLF Chairman Yasin Malik and Bar Association Shopian. In its reaction, PDP too rejected the CBI findings and said that the agency had only proved Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s initial statement---death by drowning---as correct as, according to it, had been apprehended by the masses.
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SKEWPY’s rosy picture carries thorns and thistles for professional grads
It happens whenever bureaucrats are given the role of policy-makers
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 13: NC-led coalition government’s decision of assigning the role of policy-makers to serving as well as retired bureaucrats in the crucial matter of addressing the problem of unemployment in Jammu & Kashmir has turned out to be a blunder. It needs just half-an-hour to realise that so-called Sher-e-Kashmir Employment and Welfare Programme for the Youth (SKEWPY) contains nothing for 15,000-odd unemployed youth having graduation and post-graduation in medical, veterinary, agriculture and forestry sciences besides engineering and technology.
Perhaps the best thing in the entire bureaucratic exercise is that it has been officially called neither a package nor a policy but simply a ‘programme’. Authors of the much-hyped 38-page document seem to have to applied little mind on the miseries afflicting the graduates and post-graduates of the professional courses. Rather than fulfilling an election manifesto commitment of creating the job opportunities for the unemployed, they have chiefly revolved around the ruling parties’ invariable argument: ‘Unemployment is a global phenomenon; Government can’t provide salaried jobs to everybody’ et al.
According to a prime tabulation in the document, as many as 4,033 completely illiterate people have also registered themselves as ‘unemployed’ at different Employment Exchanges in the last three months. They have been duly accommodated among 4,47,653 individuals looking for a government job. As against the widely circulated figure of 500,000 youth, not more than 3,67,000 people (including 4033 illiterate) have been found to have registered themselves in the said period.
Amalgamation of professional and common graduates of science, arts and commerce with 67, 100 ‘Middle Pass’ and 4,033 ‘Illiterate’ is perhaps hard to understand. The document makes a mention of 945 Draftsmen and 14,311 Diploma Holders but does not carry a break-up of the unemployed with diploma, degree and PG in various professional disciplines. With such kind of an approach, officials do find it easy to establish that almost all the departments were already over-staffed.
With nearly total thrust on transformation of District Employment Exchanges into District Employment and Counseling Centres (DECCs), skill upgradation, wage employment and Voluntary Service Allowance (VSA), the document makes a generic commitment of filling up all substantive vacancies within the financial year of 2010-11. That one sentence makes it a ‘package’ not policy. It also talks of recruiting 100,000 people in government sector in the next 5 years.
The SKEWPY document does not explain as to how the state government would provide job to nearly 15,000 of the unemployed youth who have degrees and diplomas in various professional courses. While a number of such youth have secured inferior jobs of clerks and Rebar-e-Taleem, others have been hopelessly running from pillar to pillar in search of the jobs they have been trained for after facing tough competitions and spending huge amounts of money. Public representatives, not bureaucrats, can understand the plight of these people when their failure to get a government job results into their failure of getting life-partners. For the fear of reaching close to the age-bar of 37 years, a number of them have already committed suicide.
While sleeping over thousands of substantive vacancies, successive governments in the state have rarely gone for reorganization of departments inspite of the fact that the state of once seven districts has 22 districts today. Every second official happens to be “incharge” in Forest, Power and many other departments inspite of Supreme Court of India’s blanket ban on Stop Gap Arrangement.
Government’s statistics apart, fact of the matter is that a linesman in PDD is holding the charge of 20 to 30 sub stations. There haven’t been Chief Engineers available for three to five substantive posts in PDD. All the hospitals and PHCs are running shortage of 30 to 40 percent staff. With no recruitment of ACFs and Range Officers for the last many years and the last trained forest officer reaching superannuation in a few years, Forest and all of its related departments will be without a trained and qualified officer in the next 12 years. There has been neither recruitment of any technical officer nor rules of recruitment in Forest Protection Force since it was created in December 1996.
On the other hand, hundreds of trained professionals are heading to the age-bar even after having completed their degrees or PGs in Forestry and Agricultural sciences over 12 years ago.
Even after publication of the ‘Employment Policy’ document, nobody can stop officials of PSC and SSRB from making rules and criteria of selection for different posts as per the suitability of their favourites.
After this ‘Programme’, Government will have to formulate a comprehensive Employment Policy to ensure either a salaried government job or parallel avenues in private sector for the technically qualified professionals rather than irresponsibly count them among the huge crowd of 4.47 Lakh unemployed, including 4,033 illiterate people.
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Bilal Lone: Omar Govt supporting hardliners for vested interest
‘Geelani can’t be a holy cow of Kashmir movement. He was in Assembly when Sheikh was in jail’
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 10: Hitting hard on the separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani, senior leader of Hurriyat Conference (Mirwaiz faction) and Chairman of a faction of Peoples Conference, Bilal Gani Lone, today said that the mass agitation in the Valley in 2008 had failed because of the fact that “extremists and fundamentalists’ had tried to exclusively impose themselves on the Kashmiris to hijack the show. He said that everybody in the mainstream politics, from Mehbooba Mufti to Omar Abdullah and his government, had joined hands to provide one or the other support to the Kashmiri hardliners and they were all “at war with the moderate leadership”.
Breaking his 18-month-long silence and responding to questions in Take One Television’s current affairs programme “Face To Face With Ahmed Ali Fayyaz”, 46-year-old separatist leader Bilal Gani Lone observed that all of the pro-India politicians, from PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti to NC’s Omar Abdullah, and his government, were in a race to provide one or the other support to the separatist hardliners like Syed Ali Shah Geelani. “They have a strong vested interest in it. They have all launched a war against the moderates. They are, in fact, creating holy cows to keep the moderates and pro-dialogue leadership at bay”, Lone said of the mainstream politicians.
Lone referred to Ms Mufti’s assertion that no resolution of the Kashmir problem would be complete without Geelani’s signatures on it. According to him, Omar Abdullah’s government had outsmarted that of Mufti Sayeed’s in extolling the hardliners and lending them undue space on the Valley’s political landscape.
“But, I have not given the role of a political martial to Geelani Sahab. Martials are in the Assembly and I have never been to that. I accept him as the representative of a particular political ideology. There is no Sheikh Abdullah in today’s politics in Kashmir. He is being created into a holy cow but I don’t accept him one as he was in Assembly even when Sheikh Abdullah was in jail”, Lone added. “This is an age old political rivalry. Geelani Sahab and my father (Abdul Gani Lone), have been together in the Assembly. I fail to understand how one of them was a good MLA and other a bad MLA”, he asserted with a painful reference to the circumstances that led to his father’s assassination in 2002.
Lone suggested that much more than political ideology, it was the “Pir versus non-Pir” conflict in Kashmir’s society that was behind a many politicians’ animosity to his father and the party. “It is rather a hard fact that the Jamaat-e-Islami cadres in South Kashmir voted for Mufti Sayeed’s PDP in the recent Assembly elections”, he said. When it was pointed out to him that Chairman of his Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, was himself a cleric-politician, Lone quipped: “He is a better Pir”. “I’m not afraid of saying this truth. What can they do other than firing a bullet on me?” asked he.
Lone alleged that Mr Geelani and other hardliners had been calling all those who did not toe their line as “traitors” and raising the bogey of “sell out”. He asserted that there was no question of the Mirwaiz-led Hurriyat comprising the interests of the Kashmiris in any dialogue process. He said that there was no other way than a dialogue with New Delhi and Islamabad but sought to make it clear that Hurriyat had neither established any contact with the Government of India nor received any offers or assurances for participating in a dialogue process. According to him, Mr Geelani and other hardliners had vitiated the atmosphere with their statements and the same had provoked gunmen to strike on a dove like Fazal Haq Qureshi.
“My father became the target and casualty of an identical situation in 2002. But I have left the matter of his assassination to God. I hope He will do justice one day. We are not holding arms, nor do we know to use them”, Lone added.
Lone claimed that neither Mirwaiz nor his colleagues in the Hurriyat had ever talked of bilateralism. He believed that there was little possibility of tripartite talks at this stage between New Delhi, Islamabad and the Kashmiris and Hurriyat was committed to talking to both India and Pakistan. “Yes, there is bilateralism between India and Pakistan. And I strongly believe that most of our advocates of tripartite talks would jostle to lay their thump impressions on any kind of a deal struck between New Delhi and Islamabad”, he added. He said that certain countries had been persuading India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir crisis in a bilateral process but emphasized that there was absolutely no world pressure on New Delhi.
“There’s no way other than dialogue. For how long could we afford to enjoy the luxury of being leaders of the followers whose children were dying for a penny? Have we got to turn Kashmir into another Afghanistan? Honestly speaking, we have all created fortunes for ourselves and miseries for the poor, ordinary people. He said that pro-India politicians were exploiting their artificial sympathies for the hardliners to the hilt as, neither they nor their counterparts in the separatist movement, wanted to see their shops shut.
“In this kind of a free-for-all, you don’t need any followers. You just need a Chairman, a General Secretary and perhaps one more to launch a party. Extremists and hardliners are the most relevant in such a situation. Money and fortunes flow to most of them from two tracks. We have been on the single track and taken (money) only from one side. That too has been stopped one-and-a-half years ago”, Lone said candidly. “I see the day nearer when everybody of us will be held accountable”. He observed that hardliners were enjoying a field day in the Valley with overt and covert support from pro-India politicians and the government while as the moderates were being selectively attacked and eliminated.
Asked why four particular separatist leaders---Bilal Gani Lone, Prof Abdul Gani Bhat, Maulvi Abbas Ansari and Fazal Haq Qureshi---had distanced themselves from the mass agitation in Kashmir over Amarnath land allotment row in 2008, Lone asserted that hardliners had hijacked the show with their jingoism and left little space for reason and moderation. According to him, the Kashmiris had got a “blank cheque” in the form of the land row but their leaders had failed to cash it in the interest of the people.
“Extremists and fundamentalists tried to thrust themselves and their own political ideology on the people, which was not acceptable. They played the spoilsport and failed this nation with anarchy and jingoism”, Lone said. His 45-minute-long interview is scheduled to be telecast in prime time slots of Take One TV network in Srinagar and Jammu this week.
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SKIMS doctors confirm gunshot on Qureshi
Guerrilla alliance warns similar action against other pro-dialogue leaders
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 8: Doctors attending on the traumatized separatist leader at SKIMS have finally confirmed that Fazal Haq Qureshi had fallen to a firearm attack while returning to his home in Bilal Colony of Soura on the evening of December 4th. Meanwhile, an alliance of three guerrilla groups has said that the separatist leader had been fired upon for his infidelity of joining a dialogue process secretly and arranging meetings of underground leaders with the Government of India.
Senior doctors, who were part of the surgical procedure on December 4th and have been attending on 63-year-old Fazal Haq Qureshi at an Intensive Care Unit at SKIMS, today confirmed to Early Times that the separatist leader had been fired upon in his head from the back. Wishing anonymity they maintained that they had observed a gunshot wound which indicated that Qureshi had become the target of a single pistol shot from point blank range. They said that his brain matter had come out and the bullet that pierced into his head had badly damaged one of the vital bones.
Doctors said that Qureshi showed further improvement today as they witnessed some organic movement including once opening his eye. They said that Qureshi was stable but not completely out of danger. According to them, even after his recovery, Qureshi could have some of his vital systems malfunctional or fully dysfunctional. KNS quoted Director of SKIMS, Dr Abdul Hamid Zargar, confirming gunfire attack on the separatist.
SSP Srinagar, Javed Riyaz Bedar, said that Police had conducted a surface search around the spot but had not yet recovered any empties of other material evidence to establish that Qureshi had been targeted with a firearm. He, however, added that the search was inconclusive and would continue to find as to how the separatist leader had been assaulted. He said that ballistic experts and doctors were still trying to find if there was a substantial material evidence of an armed attack on Mr Qureshi.
Meanwhile, all alliance of three guerrilla organizations---Al-Nasireen, Farzandan-e-Millat and Shuhada Brigade---has alleged that Qureshi had been attacked after he refused to withdraw from a secret dialogue process with the Government of India. Spokesperson of the alliance, Samee-ul-Haq, said in a statement circulated here that Qureshi had been also arranging meetings of underground leaders with functionaries of the Government of India. “We tried our best to prevent him. We persuaded him against such acts and even sent a delegation to his home in Bilal Colony, Soura. But, unfortunately he refused to take our warning and continued his anti-movement activity”, spokesperson said.
As already reported, Al-Nasireen had claimed responsibility of the attack on Mr Qureshi and warned other pro-dialogue Kashmiri leaders of the same treatment. The militant alliance has warned all separatist leaders that its guerrillas would strike on them if they held any secret parleys with New Delhi. He vowed to fail all attempts of such dialogue process and asserted that nobody would be allowed to emerge as another Sheikh Abdullah in Jammu & Kashmir. He warned all separatist leaders to immediately withdraw from a dialogue process with New Delhi.
Authenticity of the militant alliance’s statement could not be ascertained from independent sources.
Meanwhile, those who visited SKIMS and enquired about Mr Qureshi’s condition today included Minister of Medical Education R S Chib and Minister of State for Tourism, Nasir Aslam Wani. They directed SKIMS authorities to provide best possible treatment to the traumatized separatist leader and advise the state government if he required air ambulance and more specialized treatment at AIIMS and other hospitals in the country.
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In Kashmir’s changing climate, JKLF chief rubs shoulders with Ministers
YouTube, Reliance radio to carry Terra Naomi’s call beyond Copenhagen
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 7: With the fast changing political climate in this troubled Himalyan state, Kashmir’s separatist leaders have begun to throng hubs of cultural activity, including concerts of Western entertainers---perhaps much more than visiting the tombs of their “martyrs of azadi”. Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Chairman and the Valley’s pioneer of armed insurgency, Yasin Malik, was today conspicuously in attendance, alongwith a number of pro-India politicians and Ministers, at Terra Naomi’s concert on global warming at Sher-e-Kashmir International Conference Centre.
Attending the YouTube sensation’s show is definitely not the first for one-time dreaded terrorist Yasin Malik whose transformation has been meticulously illustrated by one of USA’s best read writers a couple of years back. Many at home find it hard to reconcile to Malik’s “transformation”. His nonagenarian mentor and father of one of America’s celebrated poets (Aga Shahid Ali), Aga Ashraf Ali, had taken umbrage to Governor S K Sinha’s reference to the book “Transformation of a Terrorist” at the same spot two years ago.
Even as Malik was not among the selectively invited guests and speakers of a conference co-sponsored by J&K Police in 2007, months later he broke the ice by attending the Golden Jubilee function of the influential Urdu daily “Aftab” at SKICC. Notwithstanding the first ever CRPF bunkers around a media organization coming up on the Aftaab premises in March 1990, Malik used to treat its editor Khwaja Sanaullah Bhat as his father and godfather. He would certainly attend the occasion wherever held.
This was dramatically followed by Malik’s attendance at Tagore Hall of Jammu & Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture & Languages. What attracted him to the show was the eminent theatre activist Mohammad Amin Bhat’s two-act play “Chhal” (The Trap). It was a wonderful metaphor on developing and flourishing of the vested interest in the armed insurgency. Detractors of “cultural aggression” chose to be mute on Malik’s infidelity as it came in just a couple of years of the separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani marking his presence at Tagore Hall on occasion of jurist-writer Ghulam Nabi Gauhar’s book release.
Spitting on the cultural programmes of the state-run Akademi, Geelani had positively responded to Gauhar’s invite after a long absence at Tagore Hall. He had never been seen at this venue after a memorable conference he attended in 1989 with a number of National Conference (NC) leaders, including late Hakeem Habibullah---former Chairman of J&K Legislative Assembly, who successfully and unsuccessfully contested a number of Assembly elections against the senior Jamaat-e-Islami ideologue in home constituency of Sopore. Both men of intellectual pursuit, Geelani and Hakeem had posed for photo-ops with their last hug.
In recent times, death of senior journalists, namely founder-editor of Aftaab Sanaullah Bhat and founder-editor of Srinagar Times Sofi Ghulam Mohammad, has brought together Kashmir’s mainstream and separatist politicians inspite of a bad taste showdown between the supporters of Malik and Geelani at Lalchowk. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and a number of his senior party colleagues and Ministers attended the funeral at both places alongwith who is who of the Valley’s separatist camp.
Many of them have also been making a bee-line to the wounded Hurriyat leader Fazal Haq Qureshi at SKIMS. Even as Geelani’s anti-dialogue brigade kept shouting in Soura “Bharat ka jau yaar hai, gadaar hai gadaar hai (Anybody soft to New Delhi is but a traitor), Geelani walked straight into the ICU at SKIMS and enquired about Qureshi’s health.
At today’s concert on Global Warming, there were no speeches---political or otherwise. Those who enjoyed the thrill with thousands of ecological enthusiast included Minister of Tourism, Nawang Rigzin Jora and his deputy Nasir Aslam Wani Sogami. An Omar Abdullah-confidante, Sogami played a key role in organizing the show. Many in the audiences believed that Malik attended courtesy longtime friend, Usman Raheem. Usman, an American national claiming that his grandfather and great grandfather had migrated to USA from Kashmir, happens to be the Regional Director of the non-profit Mercy Corps that had organized Terra’s show.
Even as Terra mesmerized her audiences with her globally popular “Say It’s Possible”, her meticulously composed mixture with the Kashmiri fusion “yi chhu bilkul mumkin zenau jang, asi zenai jang, asi zenau jang, yi chhu jang asi panas seet karun” was a great attraction. Shehnaz Rasheed’s appeal against Global Warming and meltin g of glaciers in the Himalayan state was performed with Terra by Waheed Jeelani and a beautifully costumed troupe of a dozen of male and female artistes, supported by an orchestra of six instrumentalists, all from the Valley.
Video of Terra’s song, which was picturized by cameraman Shafquat Habib with her on the alpine slopes of Afarwath and Kongdoori, beyond Gulmarg, yesterday, would be shortly available for millions of viewers on the YouTube. It will be also dominating day and night entertainment programmes of FM 92.7 in Srinagar, Jammu and a few of other cities of the popular radio network which has 47 stations in India.
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Followers remember but leaders forget Abdullah
No reference to Sheikh in Sher-e-Kashmir lecture at SKIMS raising day
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 5: In the pre-1990 halcyon days in the Valley, celebrities like N Palkhiwallah, Khushwant Singh, Adarsh Sen Anand and George Fernandes used to deliver Sher-e-Kashmir oration on occasion of the raising day of Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), that falls on the birth anniversary of the former Chief Minister, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. J&K’s prestigious tertiary care hospital and a deemed University had been raised by Sheikh in less than six years. Alongwith the beautiful shrine-cum-mosque complex at Hazratbal, SKIMS indisputably has the distinction of being Sheikh Abdullah’s best contribution to millions of his followers in Valley.
So it was not for nothing that the country’s icons in jurisprudence, literature, art and politics used to devote paragraphs of their lectures on different facets of Sheikh Abdullah’s personality on this day in Srinagar. With Chief Minister and Sheikh’s grandson, Omar Abdullah, being the Chief Guest and Minister of Finance, Abdul Rahim Rather, as “Guest of Honour”at the 27th Annual Day of SKIMS this afternoon, there was not even a cursory reference to the great SKIMS founder in today’s lecture on “Healthcare scenario in developing parts of world---Economic issues and Challenges”.
Was the author of PDP’s “self-rule” ignorant of Sheikh’s significance and relevance to the commemoration or he thought it prudent to religiously restrict himself to the ‘economic issues’ is something better known to Chairman of the SKIMS Governing Body (Omar Abdullah) and his Director of the hospital, Dr Abdul Hamid Zargar. Much like today’s star speaker, Dr Zargar has passed through the ‘Great Transition’ with finesse and established his credentials on all the parameters of political endocrinology and metabolism. He has been invariably taking care to ensure that none of his peers in the Valley’s “Club of Chief Guests’ remained absent from his politico-academic functions.
With his advantage of having at least one diabetic in all the families of consequence in the summer capital, Dr Zargar has obviously little to be worried about over the “triviality” of Sheikh Abdullah’s reference being missing from the lecture. Besides, gone are the days when such things would matter in the political establishment as an altogether new corporate culture has come up and the CEOs do make “better use” of their time.
Sheikh was miserly remembered even on other occasions of the day from Sumarbugh to Ganderbal. That the masters of these shows themselves had simply a lousy knowledge about the man whose birth day they were celebrating, may be one of the reasons.
Main remembrance venue at Hazratbal, which used to have one-odd visitor in late Mohammad Maqbool Khaksaar from 1989 to 1996, was packed to capacity today right from the chilly morning. National Conference (NC) flags, banners and buntings made the occasion unusually ceremonial. While the followers tightened their ranks in Sheikh’s honour and reverence, most of their leaders chose to remain mute. For the first time in several years, there was no ceremonial speech from the Chief Minister even as more than 10,000 of his high-spirited audiences failed to reconcile to his constraint of not unfolding the much-hyped, much-expected ‘employment policy’ of the coalition government. Some of them even shouted slogans in anger as they witnessed the Pheran-clad Chief Minister winding up without saying a word.
Even the fire-brand NC patriarch, Farooq Abdullah, paid more homage to the wounded Hurriyat leader, Fazal Haq Qureshi, than to Sheikh Abdullah, albeit without giving Mirwaiz and Qureshi credit of having a “decent footing” in once Sher-e-Kashmir’s jungle of monopoly in the Valley.
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Hurriyat leader Fazal Haq almost dead in attack
Al-Nasireen’s loud and clear warning to actors of ‘quiet diplomacy’
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 4: Senior separatist leader and a member of the Executive Committee of Hurriyat Conference (Mirwaiz faction), Fazal Haq Qureshi, today became the first casualty of the cacophony of ‘quiet diplomacy’ and secret dialogue between the Kashmiri secessionists and Government of India when a guman in ambush pumped pistol shots into his head while returning to home after performing the evening prayers at a mosque in Soura outskirts of this capital city. Doctors at Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) Soura passed the nearly dead Qureshi through a surgical procedure but maintained that he was “very unlikely to recover”. Hurriyat has pointed fingers on the separatist hardliners and, in protest, called for a shutdown in the Valley on Saturday.
Inspector General of Police Kashmir Zone, Farooq Ahmed, told Early Times that 63-year-old separatist leader, Fazal Haq Qureshi, was found by passers-by lying in a pool of blood at 1750 hours between his usual place of worship and residence in Soura. Residents believed that he had been ambushed by armed assailants immediately after he performed his evening prayers at a local mosque and was returning to his alone, possibly alone. Some people around the spot told Police that they heard at least one gunshot and took it for a firecracker. In minutes, some passers-by spotted Qureshi lying in a pool of blood. He was quickly evacuated to SKIMS where doctors examined him and found him “almost dead”.
IGP said that in view of his general threat perception, Qureshi had been, on several occasions, offered Police protection but he had invariably declined to live as a protected person. He maintained that Police and security forces had not received any inputs suggesting possibility of a terrorist attack on Qureshi.
A founder member of Kashmir’s pioneer guerrilla group ‘Al-Fatah’ in early 1970s, Qureshi had joined Government service after his release from jail. For several years, he worked in Civil Secretariat. Later, he joined pro-Pakistan Peoples League and quit government service. In the year 2000, Qureshi had played key role in arranging the first ever dialogue process between senior commanders of the formidable Hizbul Mujahideen and Government of India, represented in the talks by then union Home Secretary Kamal Pandey. However, the process was aborted within two weeks by Hizbul Mujahideen’s Pakistan-based “Supreme Commander” Syed Salah-ud-din, who developed serious differences with regard to the dialogue process with one time confidante Abdul Majeed Dar.
After Hurriyat’s split in 2003, Qureshi founded a new organization, namely Peoples Political Party (PPP) which was admitted as a constituent of the Executive Committee of Hurriyat Confeence (Mirwaiz faction). Alongwith Prof Abdul Gani Bhat, Bilal Gani Lone and Maulvi Abbas Ansari, Mr Qureshi had, of late, emerged as a strongly pro-dialogue leader in the separatist camp. This group of so-called moderate leaders has been facing bitter criticism for favouring bilateral talks with New Delhi and Islamabad separately not only by almost all the militant outfits and hardliners like Mr Geelani but also from colleagues in the Mirwaiz faction of Hurriyat, notably Shabir Ahmed Shah and Nayeem Ahmed Khan.
While most of the separatist leaders in Hurriyat (Mirwaiz), JKLF Chairman, Mohammad Yasin Malik and a number of mainstream leaders, including Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, condemned it as a cowardly attack by “saboteurs of the dialogue”, Hurriyat (G) Chairman, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, too called it un-Islamic and said that the assailants deserved to be punished. Parallel to a chorus of condemnations, someone called the local news agency, Kashmir News Service (KNS), over telephone, identified himself as Al-Nasireen guerrilla outfit’s spokesperson, Abdul Waheed Sheikh, and claimed that the militants of his organization had attacked Qureshi for being part of the ‘secret dialogue’ with India.
Most of the prominent separatist leaders, notably Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Professor Abdul Gani Bhat, Bilal Gani Lone, Masroor Abbas Ansari, Mohammad Yasin Malik and Mohammad Nayeem Khan visited SKIMS and enquired about Qureshi’s condition. IGP Kashmir, Farooq Ahmed, SSP Srinagar Javed Riyaz Bedar and other middle-rung Police officers remained present at SKIMS as long as surgery continued on Qureshi. IGP said that the doctors had operated upon Qureshi and found an entry wound but no exit. According to the doctors who spoke to IGP, a bullet could have ricocheted after breaking a bone in Qureshi’s brain.
Doctors told Early Times that on the initial examination, they found Qureshi’s heart rate and BP zero with no functioning of lungs. They said that the brain matter was found to have come out which was put in place. They said that Qureshi’s recovery would depend much on revival of his lung and heart functioning but maintained that chances of his recovery were bleak. They said that no bullet was found in Qureshi’s head but vital bones were found badly fractured, possibly due to a gunshot from point blank range. After the surgery was completed successfully, Qureshi was removed from Operation Theatre to the ICCU at 2200 hours tonight.
Mirwaiz condemned the murderous attack on Qureshi as a dastardly act by “those who do not want resolution of the Kashmir problem”. He called for a shutdown in the Valley in protest. Mirwaiz said in a reaction to the attack on his colleague that it was the handiwork of “those whose shops could be shut” in the resolution of the Kashmir crisis.
Before today’s murderous attack on Qureshi, a number of prominent separatist leaders---including Mirwaiz Umar’s father Mirwaiz Maulvi Mohammad Farooq (1990), Bilal Gani Lone’s father Abdul Gani Lone (2002), Qazi Nisar Ahmed (1994) and Sheikh Abdul Aziz (2008)---have died in almost identical attacks in the last 20 years of separatist movement in Kashmir.
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Valley impatiently waiting for CM’s Dec 5th speech
Kashmiris look more curious about ‘job package’ than ‘quiet diplomacy’
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Dec 3: Budget Session announcements of Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, and Finance Minister, Abdul Rahim Rather, have generated so much of high expectations and enthusiasm among the unemployed in Jammu & Kashmir that half-a-million of them have got themselves registered at recruitment exchanges all over the state. Even as both, Omar and Rather, have said in unambiguous terms that the coalition government would draft the state’s first ‘Employment Policy’ and unfold it on occasion of the National Conference founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s birth anniversary on December 5th, people at large seem to have mistaken it for an ‘Employment Package”.
Well-placed sources in the government revealed to EARLY TIMES that Department of Planning, functioning directly under Chief Minister, had worked out an employment policy with regard to engagement, regularization and recruitment of gazetted as well as non-gazetted, including class-4th, staff in consultation with different departments in the last about three months. Creation of posts and re-organisation in all government departments, essentially at particular intervals, would now become mandatory.
Sources said that architects of the state’s maiden employment policy were expected to rationalize the system right from notifying the vacancies and drafting of recruitment rules to the process of screening, conducting written tests and interviews. Due to lack of accountability until now, officials with their personal vested interests have been sleeping over the vacancies for decades, referring the same in parts to PSC and SSRB, violating rules concerning in-service promotion and direct recruitment, framing criteria according to the qualifications and merit of their favourites and relatives besides indulging in a host of other manipulative tactics which had, consequently, blocked the entry of merit holders into the government services.
On the other hand, officials in PSC as well as SSRB, have been resorting to different tactics to scupper the prospects of meritorious candidates and pave the way for their favourites. As lately as last fortnight, PSC officials were found to have allotted Jammu centers to Kashmir-based B Sc Forestry candidates who received the admission cards on the eve of the screening test and failed to participate in it. Officials of vested interest have been perpetuating the free-for-all system and declaring all B Sc candidates---including those having degrees in Veterinary Science and Statistics---eligible to appear in the examination for selection of Assistant Conservators of Forest (ACF). With the fraud played by PSC officials to block the entry of B Sc Forestry candidates, most of them from the Valley failed to appear in the test at the Jammu centers.
“I had clearly given my choice of centre as Srinagar. I received the admission slip a day before the screening test and was surprised to find that my centre had been fixed at Hari Singh Higher Secondary School Jammu. Fixing of centers is indeed discretion with PSC but Kashmir-based candidates are examined at Jammu centers only when the number of such candidates is less than 50. But, in this screening test, PSC had received as many as 9500 applications for just 30 posts of ACFs and there was no constraint of fixing Jammu centers for Srinagar candidates”, said Wajahat Waseem (Roll No: 9006066) who has passed B Sc Forestry with ‘A’ Grade four years ago.
“Fixing of the centers is the Commission’s discretion”, said PSC’s Controller of Examinations Ghulam Hassan Mir. He initially insisted that none of Kashmir-based candidates, excluding those who had given such choice in the form, had been fixed in Jammu. However, when a couple of examples were pointed out to him, Mir justified with the argument that it was PSC’s “discretion”.
This fraudulent behaviour of the officials at PSC and SSRB has disappointed Tariq Ahmed Ganai of Dangarpora Shadimarg to the extent that he is dying to get a job of a Forester or even the far inferior Forest Guard. After completing his M Sc in Forestry, Ganai is presently working on his Ph D in Forestry.
“If this non-sense system goes on and Omar Abdullah fails to keep his word of doing justice to the youth, in the next couple of years, Tariq Ahmed Ganai with his Ph D in Forestry will be a Forester or Forest Guard and some bureaucrat’s relative with simple B Sc Statistics will be his ACF, three steps higher”, said one of Ganai’s classmates. He described Forest Minister Mian Altaf as a “man of high integrity” but observed that in understanding such problems, he had proved to be “as illiterate as his predecessors Qazi Mohammad Afzal and Mohiuddin Sofi”. “Sofi Sahab and Qazi Sahab kept wailing till their end that recruitment of ACFs and Range Officers had not taken place through genuine doors since 1984. Now Mian Sahab is being taken for a ride by vested interests”, added he.
It has been widely observed that the trained professionals disappointed by PSC and SSRB have stopped mentioning their professional degrees like MBBS, BV Sc, B Sc Agriculture, M Sc Agriculture, B Sc Forestry, M Sc Forestry, BE, B Tech, ME, M Tech and have been applying for inferior jobs. “Luckiest” of them have been able to lay their hands on the posts of Rehbar-e-Taleem, Junior Assistant, Village Level Workers, Patwaris, Forest Guards, Drivers etc. A number of such youth are also working on pretty inferior positions in some private companies.
Even as parts of the “Employment Package” ---like formation of J&K State Overseas Employment Corporation and creation of 2,000 fresh posts in Health Department---have already rolled out, thousands of unemployed youth in the Valley seem to be eagerly waiting for Chief Minister’s speech on December 5th.
Reports from many localities say that men associated with the job mafia have already fanned out to compile “List of Unemployed”. With their “proven credentials”, like arranging jobs of Constables against cash payment in Budgam and Kupwara districts, these touts of influential men in politics and bureaucracy have since released their “Rate Lists” and are, accordingly, collecting money from the aspirants. Highest rate of Rs 6 Lakh has been fixed by them for the post of Sub Inspectors for which recruitment process is already underway.
On the streets, nobody really seems interested in the Chidambaram-Omar cacophony of “quiet diplomacy”, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s forthcoming visit to Pakistan, Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s campaign for “demilitarization”, outcome of CBI inquiry in Shopian, J&K state getting two Central Universities and the Human Right Inc’s “discovery of mass graves”.
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GANG RAPE OF ECOLOGY-V
CS to Speaker: Govt is helpless, Sir
Comprehensive law to regulate kiln operations being introduced in J&K soon
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 29: In days of the Chief Minister shedding tears on the abnormally changing climate, Chief Secretary, S S Kapur, has politely written to Speaker of Legislative Assembly, Mohammad Akbar Lone, that Mr Omar Abdullah’s government did not possess any legal framework to close down 155 illegal and unauthorized brick kilns in Budgam district. He has, nevertheless, assured the Speaker that the state government had woken up to the 17-year-long gang rape of ecology any a comprehensive law to regulate operation of brick kilns would be introduced soon in Jammu & Kashmir in the form of an Ordinance.
Taking suo moto cognizance of an environmental series in EARLY TIMES issues of 8th, 9th and 13th October 2009, Speaker had written DO NO: LA/J/Spk/06/09 dated 10-11-2009 to Chief Secretary, asking him to get all illegal and unauthorized brick kilns closed down in Budgam district. He had recorded serious concern over the ecological degradation and breakdown of administrative machinery in the letter and told head of the state bureaucracy that several delegations had made similar complaints to him during a recent visit to Budgam. He had written to Mr Kapur that a large number of brick kilns had been set up in Budgam up “in utter violation of the prescribed rules and regulations in connivance with the concerned departments, thereby causing a lot of inconvenience to the people there”.
Quoting a recent inventory prepared by J&K State Pollution Control Board (PCB) and submitted to Chief Minister in July 2009, Early Times had put the number of brick kilns established and operating in Budgam district in brazen violation of over a dozen laws and without PCB’s Consent to Establish (CTE) and Consent to Operate (CTO) as 155 out of the total of 202 units.
Highly placed sources in the state government revealed to this newspaper today that in his DO No: CAPD/Food/19/Brick/09 Dated 26th November 2009, Chief Secretary has informed the Speaker that “presently we do not have any legal framework for regulating the activities of the brick kilns as the “J&K Brick Kilns (Regulation) Act, 1990” enacted during the Governor’s rule in 1990 has not been replaced by an Act passed by the State Legislature”.
“However, the Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution Department has now drafted an Ordinance viz “J&K Brick Kiln (Regulation) Ordinance, 2009” which is shortly being submitted to the State Cabinet for its consideration”, Chief Secretary has written to the Speaker and added: “The issue of illegal use of agricultural/forest land has also been taken care of in the proposed Ordinance, which also seeks to adequately empower the State Government to control the illegal growth of brick kilns”.
Even as Chief Secretary has expressed his Government’s helplessness and pleaded that the Governor’s early 1990s law had never been replaced by a state legislation, sources in Law Department insisted that Government was adequately empowered to dismantle and demolish all unauthorized industrial units, including brick kilns, that had been set up or had been operating without mandatory CTE and CTO from PCB.
“PCB has already issued notices and closed a number of such units, including brick kilns. Had there been no legal framework, how would these have been closed down and removed?”, asked a middle rung official in Law Department, who wished not to be identified. “If Governor’s 1990-model “Brick Kiln Act” has ceased to exist 17 years ago, how are Tehsildars continuously issuing licenses that too without NOC from different departments and necessary consents from PCB?”, asked he. He argued that Chief Secretary should have taken stringent administrative action against such Revenue officers but “by way of expressing government’s helplessness” he had given free sanction to such licenses of unauthorised units.
PCB’s Legal Advisor, Mohammad Maqbool Shah, observed that the new Ordinance, which could be passed as law in the forthcoming session of Legislature, would address a many lacunae in the administrative framework. He said that instead of Tehsildars, Deputy Commissioners were being made as the Licensing Authority. He said that PCB was in possession of a legal framework, duly sanctioned by Parliament and applicable to all states including Jammu & Kashmir, under which notices were being served to unauthorized and violating units and most of these were being closed down under a legal procedure.
Mr Shah said that all such units, particularly the high pollution brick kilns, were supposed to get necessary clearance and consents from PCB under Section 25 of “The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974” and Section 21 of “The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981”. He insisted that PCB was empowered under Section 33 (A) of Water Act and Section 31-A of Air Act to issue closure orders and senior officers of different departments---in case of brick kilns Deputy Commissioners---were bound to implement same. He added that PCB was additionally empowered to prosecute even Heads of Departments and DCs in case they failed to implement the closure orders issued by PCB.
“We have issued notices and subsequently closure orders against 50 illegal and unauthorized brick kilns in Anantnag and Pulwama district in the last two or three months. Now we have identified at least 50 of such kilns for similar action in Budgam district”, Mr Shah said but justified the new Ordinance as, according to him, it would take care of siting criteria and many other things. He informed that the defaulting units were being cleared if they responded positively and took corrective measures within 30 days of receiving PCB’s notice. “However, all the units, including brick kilns, laid in violation of siting criteria are ab initio unauthorized and nobody in the government is authorized to regularize such units. These have to be dismantled under the existing legal framework”, he added.
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Is Rather in the eye of a storm within his Govt?
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 27: Despite retaining massive support in his home constituency of Chrar-e-Sharief in the 7th successive Assembly election in 2008, senior National Conference (NC) leader and Minister of Finance, Abdul Rahim Rather, has found himself in the worst of his times in the year 2009. His stars have favoured him only to the extent that he has got the charity of a berth in Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s Cabinet---something that eluded his junior colleague and NC crowd-puller Chowdhary Mohammad Ramzan or his parallel in Congress party, Choudhary Mohammad Aslam.
Maintaining his unflinching faith and loyalty for godfather Sheikh Abdullah’s party and progeny religiously in the last nearly 40 years, Rather used to be counted among three of the most influential Ministers in Dr Farooq Abdullah’s governments from 1982 to 2002. With stalwarts like Maulana Attaullah Suharwardy, Bashir Ahmed Kitchloo and P L Handoo passing away and men like Mohammad Shafi Uri either getting a dressing down at the hustings or shifting to the Parliament, Rather had for all practical purposes reached a position next only to Chief Minister in his government and President in his party.
While his worse placed colleagues kept sighing over their ‘deletion’, Rather came to be described as a disappointed Minister in the state’s political circles. Politicians as well as bureaucrats began spreading grapevine that Mr Rather wanted an accommodation ‘at par’ with his counterpart in the previous coalition regime, Muzaffar Hussain Baig. With both of his Chief Ministers---Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Ghulam Nabi Azad---Baig had, for most of his stint, retained key portfolio of Planning alongwith Finance, Law & Parliamentary Affairs.
Paradoxically in the thick of speculations of Planning coming to his way, Rather found himself stripped of even the ornamental Law & Parliamentary Affairs. He reportedly learned from some of his subordinate officials that he had been relieved of Law & Parliamentary Affairs that had gone as a bonus to his newfound detractor and Minister of Rural Development, Ali Mohammad Sagar. A strong contender for Housing & Urban Development, Sagar himself seemed to be hardly content with the poor bounty.
Despite succeeding in getting his favourite, Jalil Ahmed Khan, appointed as Economic Advisor to the state government, days to come were no soothing for Rather. According to insiders, he was never consulted in crucial matters like the coalition government’s political and administrative treatment to Shopian and its aftermath. He also managed to get three of his blue-eyed boys appointed as Directors on Board in J&K Bank but it is hardly a secret that tilt of the balance has been successfully retained by Chairman Haseeb Drabu with seven of the Directors continuing to be on his side.
Irrespective of whether it is embarrassing for Finance Minister, whose government has 53% equity in the bank, or for the Chairman, whose proximity to Chief Minister has been no different to what he had with his political mentor and promoter Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, it has been remarkably observed at Civil Secretariat and outside that the two have never had a formal meeting in the last nearly eleven months.
Well on the timing of formation of the government on 5th January, rumour mills worked overtime to talk of the “Income Tax raid” on a shopping mall in Jammu. They circulated ‘news’ that Mr Rather and his family members had been found as “silent partners” of a well established businessman. Soon it proved to be a hoax. Ever since, there has been a sustained campaign from within the corridors of power to generate one or the other controversy over the expanding business of Mr Rather’s son. The fact that he had raised a hefty loan from a bank well before formation of Omar Abdullah’s government, has proved to be his only good luck.
Rather has not been spared even on occasion of the wedding ceremony of his daughter last month. Without mentioning his name, one of the major newspapers reported that Jammu’s liquor barons had not only arranged expensive bashes for hundreds of guests but had also presented gifts “worth Rs 80 Lakh” to the host.
In quick succession of events, a top office in the government is now reported to have shot off a letter to Directorate of Estates, ostensibly insisting on austerity but implicitly and explicitly freezing all further expenditure on Rather’s and R S Chib’s Ministerial bungalows in Srinagar. “Sir, they have spent Crores on their houses” is what Chief Minister is reportedly hearing every day.
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Poonch comes nearer to Srinagar by 360 Km
Sheikh Abdullah’s ‘Greater Kashmir’ dream comes true with Omar’s Mughal Road driving
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 26: National Conference founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s dream of creating road communication links between erstwhile Poonch district (Poonch-Rajouri) and Kashmir, as also between erstwhile Doda district (Doda, Kishtwar) and the Valley, came true after decades today when his grandson and Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, drove all the way from Srinagar to Jammu through Mughal Road, linking Shopian township in south Kashmir to Bafliaz township in Jammu division. Chief Minister’s maiden driving on 84-Km long Mughal Road has brought Pooch and Rajouri district headquarters directly nearer to Srinagar by 360 Km and 160 Km respectively.
Chief Minister’s caravan comprised top functionaries of the state government including Minister for R&B, Ghulam Mohammad Saroori, Political Advisor to Chief Minister, Devender Singh Rana, Director General Police, Kuldeep Khoda, Commissioner/Secretary R&B, Mehboob Iqbal, Divisional Commissioner Kashmir, Naseem Lanker and Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone, Farooq Ahmed. Notwithstanding Omar Abdullah’s and Farooq Abdullah’s two public meetings at Paharis-dominated Karewa Manloo in the last two months, it was significantly Chief Minister’s first driving through Shopian township after the volcanic eruption over alleged rape-cum-murder of two young woman on May 29th this year.
Finding the once burning south Kashmir district headquarters indifferent to Omar’s passage, authorities seemed to have decided to put in place minimal security. There were no signs of resentment, protest or hostility when Chief Minister’s cavalcade passed through the main road which has the two ill-fated women’s house just 10 yards away.
Wending his caravan’s way through the battered forest compartments of Hirpora towards the historic highway spots of Dobjan and Nandansar, Omar showed little concern over wanton transformation of the forest land into potato fields. A little ahead, he appeared to be satisfied with the way Central Empowered Committee of Supreme Court of India had forced the authorities to deposit a sum of over Rs 10 Crore for proper protection and conservation of the habitat of the nearly extinct goat species, Markhor. At several briefings, Chief Minister has learned from Wild Life authorities how steps were underway for recovery of Markhor at Hirpora in Shopian and Limber Lachhipora in Uri.
Addressing a public gathering at Dobjan, Chief Minister said that it was the dream of his grandfather, Sheikh Abdullah, to re-link Poonch-Rajouri with Srinagar via Shopian through this historical route which was the most favourite of ordinary and royal commuters during Mughal period and thereafter. He said that the foundation stone had been, indeed, laid a couples of years before but work on Mughal Road was actually expedited during the regime of former Chief Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad. He said that Mr Azad had done a great service to his home state by arranging funds worth hundreds of Crores and making the project a reality.
Chief Minister said that He said that without the support of Central Government, this much maligned road communication project would never have taken off and become a reality. He expressed his personal gratitude to UPA Chairperson, Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, who took keen interest and provided Rs 670 crore for completion of this road. He said today he deliberately came to have first drive on this road along with R&B Minister and other officers and media to ensure that this road was formally thrown open for common vehicular traffic in June next year. He said the road required further upgradation and final macadamization.
From Dubjan, Chief Minister along with Ministers and media in hundreds of vehicles proceeded towards historical Mughal Sarai. The Mughal Sarai, which was the way side shelter centuries earlier was existing with the same glory on the side of the Mughal road. He came down from his vehicle and stopped at Mughal Sarai alongwith the team and asked execution agencies to immediately form a project for development of this sarai.
From Mughal Sarai, the Chief Minister’s caravan proceeded straight to Peer de Gali where Omar stopped for half an hour and interacted with mediapersons. He said that landscape, snow all around and the mountains were the green devdar trees and every corner of the road was enchanting and full of beauty and glory which made this drive more memorable and fascinating for him.
Thereafter, Omar drove straight to Bafliaz, the off-take point of Mughal Road on the strategic Jammu-Raouri-Poonch Road. Hundreds of people waiting for the cavalcade included Ministers of State, Shabir Ahmad Khan, Aijaz Ahmad Khan besidses MLAs Choudhary Mohammad Aslam, Rachpal Singh and Aijaz Ahmad Jan. After addressing a gathering, Chief Minister drove all the way to Jammu through Rajouri.
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‘World’s most beautiful prison’ becomes ‘India’s integral part’ for EU
Europeans visit J&K to teach Mirwaiz, Yasin Malik a whole new Greek on Kashmir
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 25: Plush with the artificially created euphoria in the vernacular Press over the Libyan leader Gaddafi’s observation on Kashmir and China’s stapled visas to some Kashmiris, Valley’s separatist leadership has been nosedived to an anti-climax with a never-before statement by a European Union delegation. At an inter-face with media here yesterday, members of the delegation called J&K “an integral part of India” and observed that the situation was returning to normality fast. It came in just six years of the EU delegation in Srinagar calling Kashmir “the world’s most beautiful prison”. Significantly, EU’s volte face also came when Chairman of Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, was busy in telling the Kashmiris how there was “maslaa Kashmir kii goonj” all over the world. Perhaps more significantly, the Europeans exploded the myth of world support to Kashmiri separatists in presence of JKLF Chairman, Yasin Malik, whose face, understandably, turned red.
Change of heart in the West has not come overnight. In the last over 13 years, the Americans and the Europeans have exhausted their patience in teaching the Kashmiri secessionists how establishing the representative character in a democratic manner was fundamental in winning recognition to their leadership and cause. Gone are the days when one-dimensional generations in the Valley would take BBC as England and Voice of America as United States of America. The make-believe world from Nowhatta to Maisuma and Hyderpora has itself fragmented to the extent that there are now innumerable factions of all separatist alliances and their constituents---with just a couple of exceptions.
Much more than “one hundred thousand sacrifices”, Hurriyat and other conglomerates have forced their movement to rest on myths and fantasies. Even before 9/11, followed by blasts in London’s buses and trains, that made all non-Muslim nations as natural allies against the Islamist insurgencies, Kashmir’s separatist leadership had begun to see outward for “political, diplomatic and moral support”. Soon after Shabir Shah was dismissed on account of his infidelity of a meeting with the US Ambassador, the competition in rubbing the shoulders with the diplomats became grotesquely manifest in the Valley’s separatist camp. These diplomats---and their drivers---could not be too naïve to understand how Kashmir’s Mahatma Gandhis and Nelson Mandelas stole their relevance out of their fabulously arranged photo sessions with the foreigners.
Amid EU’s volte face, China too has thrown a dampener on the Valley’s separatist camp and withdrawn its “support” that had been exuberantly eulogized by men like Mr Geelani. Relying more on foreigners than your own people is often fraught with such consequences.
One-upmanship in the Valley’s separatist camp has betrayed itself from day one of the armed insurgency, or at least from the day of British Parliamentarian Coffman’s visit in 1990. It has been no fewer than internecine clashes among the guerrilla outfits that became the mark of identification for the Kashmiri separatist movement till its armed strength was neutralized within and without. Hurriyat reduced itself to just a postal address of the armed insurgents as it allowed them to capture entire space and never condemned any of the thousands of brutal killings they did , on varied persuasions, on the people they claimed to represent. Nobody expected them to be critical of those done on people of other communities. Perhaps all these people joined hands to teach their “leaders” a lesson of their life in the Assembly elections of 2008.
Yes, of course, this leadership has ironically got a lease of life at home in Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s playing second fiddle to not only PDP but also to Hurriyat in the last 10 months, in disregard to the mandate he got in Assembly followed by Lok Sabha elections. He needs to be a resident of Srinagar to understand that the poor people in Valley buy newspapers to find SSRB and PSC notifications on government jobs not to read speeches of their discredited politicians. He would have to think why Yasin Malik has ceased to go on his weekly hunger strikes; why Kuldeep Nayar became sick of offering tumblers of juice to break such fasts; why, at last, Madhu Kishwar, wrote a ripper to the incorrigible JKLF Chairman; why Sajjad Lone contested elections; why USA and UK turned down visa to Mr Geelani; why the hardliner pro-Pakistan leader is not showing any inclination to visit that country.
All this being Greek to Chief Minister, who has no training in hypocritical politics, he is within his right to buy all of Mr Geelani’s phraseology---‘it’s a political, not an economic problem’---as he appears to be programmed to outsmart his mainstream rival, PDP, in the only language New Delhi has recognized in Kashmir.
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Mirwaiz declares ‘Emergency’ in Hurriyat
Before joining ‘quiet diplomacy’, top office-bearers dismissed, committees dissolved
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 23: Smelling a revolt by some colleagues in the Executive Council and several defiant constituents in the General Council, Chairman of the secessionist amalgam, Hurriyat Conference (Mirwaiz faction), Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, has dismissed top office-bearers and also dissolved all committees of the alliance amid speculations of his visit to Pakistan and joining a dialogue process, separately with New Delhi and Islamabad, for the purpose of seeking a solution to the 60-year-long Kashmir problem. Fearing an in-house tension, Hurriyat has meanwhile deferred Mirwaiz-led delegation’s visit to Pakistan.
With a number of Hurriyat (M) leaders speaking hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s language of “only solution through implementation of the UN resolutions or tripartite talks” and several constituents of the General Council holding “secret meetings”, Mirwaiz today took a day-long meeting of the decision making Executive Council at the alliance headquarters at Rajbagh. All the eight constituents of the Executive Council participated in the meeting and they were represented by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq (Awami Action Committee), Professor Abdul Gani Bhat (Muslim Conference), Bilal Gani Lone (Peoples Conference Bilal faction), Shabir Ahmed Shah (Democratic Freedom Party), Aga Syed Hassan Al-Moosavi (Anjuman-e-Sharie Shia’an), Masroor Abbas Ansari (Ittihadul Muslimeen) and Mukhtar Ahmed Waza (Peoples League Sheikh Aziz faction).
Sources present in the meeting revealed to Early Times that the participants expressed serious concern over dissenting voices emerging within the separatist fold. There was consensus over the fact conflicting policy statements “at a very crucial stage” would only create the picture of a “house in disorder” that could lead to a dangerously confusing situation. Feeling the need of a major overhaul in the structure, Executive Council authorized the Hurriyat Chairman to dismiss all the office-bearers, excluding himself, as also to dissolve all the four committees and sub committees.
Those, subsequently, removed from the top positions included Provincial President Kashmir (Nayeem Khan), Spokesperson (Prof Abdul Gani Bhat), Media Advisor (Syed Saleem Geelani) and Chief Administrator at the headquarters (Shabir Ahmed Dar). Sources said that with the mandate of the Executive Council, Mirwaiz dismissed all other office-bearers and also dissolved all the committees, including the Human Rights panel. He would continue to function as Chairman of the conglomerate, reconstitute the bodies and appoint new office-bearers “in due course of time”.
Sources said that in accordance to the consensual decision taken in the meeting, Chairman imposed blanket ban on issuing any kind of statements to the Press or public by anybody in the Hurriyat and its constituents. Executive Council member Shabir Ahmed Shah and General Council member Nayeem Ahmed Khan had, of late, issued statements and made speeches that sounded in conflict to those made by Mirwaiz. Few others in the alliance had publicly dismissed Mirwaiz Umar’s receptivity to New Delhi’s offer of dialogue with the Kashmiri leadership and a refrain on “quiet diplomacy”. They had unambiguously rejected any kind of bilateral talks and asserted that any dialogue process in absence of Pakistan’s participation and involvement would end up into a meaningless exercise. Using Mr Geelani’s language, they had claimed that Kashmir’s solution lay in nothing but implementation of the UN resolutions, asking the state subjects to vote either in favour of accession to Pakistan or to India.
According to these sources, Mirwaiz has immediately deferred his visit to both Pakistan and China. “There is no such possibility in at least next two weeks”, said a well-placed source in the Hurriyat.
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DD Kashir projects allotted to 30 J&K officials, including SSP
Lion’s share goes to employees of Education, Health, Handicrafts and DD
Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Nov 22: In brazen violation of the national broadcaster’s rules, policies and guidelines, besides service rules and regulations of the Government of Jammu & Kashmir, Doordarshan authorities at ‘Mandi House’ in New Delhi have allotted projects worth Lakhs of Rupees to more than 30 regular government employees in the front names of their wives, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers and other family members. Even as most of these beneficiaries of the dubious process of commissioning in DD Kashir belong to the state’s Education and Health departments, at least one of them is holding the rank of Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP).
With the DD continuously refusing to post the names and credentials of the allottee producers on its website, insiders have revealed to Early Times that the selection committee, functioning under the command of Controller of Programmes and Deputy Director General (DDG), Ananya Banerjee, has allotted a drama serial of 13 episodes to a Jammu-based SSP---all in the name and banner of his wife. According to these sources, Shukat Saleem Bukhari of SSB Films, who figures among the allottees, is still continuing as a regular employee in State Health Department.
Serials and other programmes have also been allotted to a Government Higher Secondary School Principal, Syed Yaqoob Dilkash (in the name and banner of his wife Qudsiya Dilkash), State Board of School Education employees, Aziz Hajini, Shaukat Usman and Altaf Hussain, in the name of their sons and brothers, University of Kashmir employee G M Wani in the name of his son, Forest Department employee Gul Javed in the name of his wife Mubeena, Power Development Department JE Shehzad Hussain in the name of his wife Rifat, Handicrafts Department employee Mohammad Shafi Mughal, Government Press employee Junaid Shah, Javed Geelani, Raja Majeed, Bashir Andrabi and over a dozen others in the names of their family members.
Almost all of these backdoor beneficiaries have been associated with Dooradrshan in different capacities but being regular government employees they are not eligible to function as private producers. Business activity of regular government employees is unlawful under Civil Service Rules and Regulations. Anybody found guilty is liable to punishment of fine and imprisonment of up to two years in addition to termination of his services.
As a modus operandi, all these backstage beneficiaries have launched fake banners in the names of their spouses, siblings, parents and other family members and managed to grab DD’s projects on front names. Most of them are additionally identifiable by the common factor of being the “directors” of the serials allotted to their front banners. It facilitates them to escort their front producers and participate in their presentations before DD’s selection committee at the Mandi House.
Even as state government’s Education and Health Departments have written letters, asking DD not to empanel their employees as producers and directors as also not to engage them in any other capacity with the television programmes without the written permission of their Heads of Departments, DD authorities have pushed everything under the carpet. “It has created a lot of indiscipline and absenteeism as these actors and writers never discharge their duties. Whenever we hold them accountable and freeze their salaries, they manage to get one or the other intervention from their contacts in the government”, lamented a senior official of Education Department.
Sources revealed that DD had not sought any permission of HoD or NOC of their administrative departments from the state government employees, unlawfully operating as “private producers”. There is a provision in the empanelment as well as in the contracts that the allotments would be cancelled if any information given by the producers was found to be incorrect or suppressed for any purpose. However, fact of the matter is that DD authorities have shut their eyes inspite of knowing well about the background of these impostors.
Some of the private producers, like Omar Imtiyaz, who has been empanelled as Producer for the first time, have been allotted the highest number of programmes i.e. 13 episodes and placed parallel to eminent producers like Farooq Masoodi and Zamir Ashai and far ahead of senior most producers and directors like Bashir Dada, Mudasar Nehvi and Pervez Masoodi, who have got just 6 to 8 episodes each. Until a couple of years, Imtiyaz was a regular employee with state Handicrafts Department. Nobody knows how he has managed to get experience certificate and profile of a private producer of more than five years in the job.
DDK Srinagar official, Gulab-ud-din Tahir, who has been handpicked by Ms Banerjee and is the one-odd official from Jammu & Kashmir associated with the DD Kashir commissioning, has reportedly issued fake telecast certificates in favour of over 50 of his favourites, including Imtiyaz, which has allegedly facilitated their empanelment through fraudulent means. A large number of eminent filmmakers and producers, who have stood by Doordarshan in the worst of its times in J&K, have been, in the process, either completely sidelined or accommodated just with peanuts of 2 to 6 episodes.
Yet again, nobody in the offices of DD’s Director General, Aruna Sharma, and DDG incharge DD Kashir, Ananya Banerjee, responded to phone calls when this newspaper attempted to get their clarification. Even after five weeks of issuing the approval letters, DD has not updated its website and its last posting on the domain are DD Kashir commissioning guidelines of 2007-08.
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Friday, December 25, 2009
Govt’s advocates figure among Shopian ‘conspirators’
HCBA threatens writ petition against CBI for ‘harassing’ lawyers
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 21: An advocate, appointed as Public Prosecutor in September 2009 by Omar Abdullah’s National Conference-led coalition government, as also his predecessor, appointed by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP-led coalition government in 2003, have surfaced on CBI’s radar even as the agency is understood to have completed its investigation in the alleged rape-cum-murder of two young women in Shopian and the search has begun for ‘conspirators’ who had created ‘false witnesses’, leading to turbulence in entire Kashmir valley for over two months. With CBI grilling seven Shopian-based advocates, including the present and former Public Prosecutors, High Court Bar Association (HCBA) has threatened to file a writ petition and also decided to proceed against two witnesses who have turned hostile after having got their statements recorded before a judicial magistrate.
Senior NC leader and Minister for Rural Development, Ali Mohammad Sagar, today asserted at a news conference here that his government would leave no stone unturned in identifying and punishing the “rapists and killers” of the two young woman in Shopian. He reiterated that his government, led by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, would ensure that none of the culprits succeeded to escape from the punishment he deserved. However, in a dramatic development, CBI has summoned and grilled seven Shopian-based advocates, including Mr Sagar’s appointee, Sheikh Mubarak, as also his predecessor, advocate Mushtaq Ahmed Gatoo, appointed as PP by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP government in 2003, for their allegedly causing harassment to some ‘witnesses’.
Others summoned and questioned for hours by a CBI team at its Humhama camp include President of Bar Association Shopian, advocate Abdul Majeed Mir, his predecessor, advocate Mohammad Yousuf Bhat, besides advocates Syed Aijaz Hussain, Mushtaq Ahmed and Shah Mansoor.
While as the PP, pursuing State’s cases at the court of District and Sessions Judge Shopian, Sheikh Mubarak, his predecessor as also sitting and former Presidents of Bar Association Shopian were grilled for over 12 hours on Wednesday last, advocates Aijaz, Mushtaq and Mansoor appeared before CBI today in compliance with a notice served on them earlier this week. As CBI has been barred by J&K High Court from disclosing its proceedings and observations, it was not clear as to what prompted the investigating agency to question the lawyers.
After a commission of inquiry, headed by retired judge of J&K High Court, Muzaffar Jan, and a Special Investigating Team (SIT) of J&K Police failed to find the culprits, state government had assigned the investigation to CBI in September last. Both women, 25-year-old Neelofar Jan w/o Shakeel Ahmed Ahangar, and 17-year-old Aasiya Jan, unmarried sister of Shakeel Ahmed Ahangar, had been found dead in Rambiara nullah in Shopian on May 30th, 2009. Amid wide allegations of ‘twin rape-cum-murder’ against Police and security forces, Valley had remained turbulent for several weeks. Nearly half-a-dozen civilians died and hundreds sustained injuries in resultant demonstrations.
Non-official sources insist that CBI had summoned and questioned the lawyers in the wake of fresh statements of two witnesses, namely Ghulam Mohiuddin and Abdul Rashid Pampori, who have turned hostile and charged the lawyers with causing them ‘harassment’ so as to give a particular statement that could frame certain Police officials. One of these witnesses said on television the other day that the lawyers, including President of Bar Association Shopian, had forced him to narrate that he had spotted a Tata-407 of Police at Rambiara and heard feminine “shrieks and screams” in the evening on May 29th. He claimed that it was all a concocted story, extorted from him under duress by both, members of Shopian Bar as well as the Public Prosecutors.
Both witnesses have backtracked from their previous statement, recorded in District and Sessions Court Shopian under Section 164 Cr PC earlier this year, and got a fresh statement recorded last week. Meanwhile, Dr Nighat Shaheen, who had claimed to have conducted per vaginal of the dead bodies on May 30h and declared publicly that both had been “victims of gang rape and murder”, has also changed her statements and made startling disclosures as to how she had fudged the vaginal swabs.
HCBA here has taken strong exception to CBI’s act of getting fresh statements recorded from the witnesses who had long back got their statements recorded before a judicial magistrate under section 164 Cr PC. Sources said that HCBA today held an emergency meeting over the fresh developments and questioned CBI’s authority of getting the statements recorded afresh and “causing harassment” to the lawyers. Sources said that HCBA chief threatened to file a writ petition before J&K High Court to challenge CBI’s authority as also District & Sessions Judge’s permission to get a fresh statement recorded from the witnesses turning hostile.
Sources said that HCBA also decided to proceed against the two witnesses under Section 199 of Indian Penal Code that makes any witness, who backtracks from his statement recorded before a judicial magistrate under Section 164 Cr PC, liable for the same punishment as due to the criminal in the matter by law.
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FIR after FIR by CBI, largesse after largesse by DD
Ex-SFC official’s family gets projects worth Rs 1 cr from Prasar Bharti
Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Nov 20: Different family members of a vigilance-tainted officer of Jammu & Kashmir State Forest Corporation (SFC), whose services were finally terminated by Ghulam Nabi Azad’s government on account of his serious indictment by Kundal Committee in 2007, have surfaced to be the beneficiaries of Doordarshan’s widely condemned commissioning for Kashir Channel. Even as Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been registering FIR after FIR against members of this family for their alleged involvement in multi-Crore scandals---latest being in June 2009---Ambika Soni’s national broadcaster has crossed all limits of showering undue favours on them, this time around Rs 1 Crore projects in DD Kashir.
Doordarshan authorities at ‘Mandi House’ in New Delhi have been continuously refusing to put the list of the allottees and their credentials on DD’s website but the list of the beneficiaries published in local newspapers as a paid advertisement by a group of private producers has made it public that at least four of them belong to the former SFC official’s family. They are clearly identifiable by their surname. Insiders insist that inspite of CBI having registered three criminal matters against them, DD Kashir’s head and incharge Deputy Director General (DDG), Ananya Banerjee, had been openly calling one of them as “my son”. Ms Banerjee has reportedly played key role in the dubious commissioning process that has dangerously eroded Doordarshan’s credibility among the intelligentsia in Jammu & Kashmir.
Informed sources revealed to Early Times that DDG Ananya Banerjee has succeeded in manipulating the commissioning process for DD Kashir and has allotted 40-50 programmes of budget ranging between Rs 2 to 3 Lakh directly to two sons of the former SFC official, his brother and nephew. The largesse has been expanded even to his nephew’s father-in-law who has never in his life either made a programme for DD or entered its premises. DDK Srinagar official, Gulab-ud-din Tahir, who had been hand-picked by Banerjee and associated with the commissioning process at ‘Mandi House’ in New Delhi, is reported to have issued more than 200 fake certificates, claiming that these ‘private producers’ had made hundreds of programmes which had been telecast by DDK Srinagar and DD Kashir.
According to these sources, some of the allottees are either completely anonymous or have joined as actors or assistants in the last 2-3 years but all of them have been allotted programmes on the basis of fake and fraudulent telecast certificates issued by GD Tahir. According to DD’s standing guidelines, private producers were eligible for empanelment of 2007-08 only if they had experience of five years in the field of television production. One of the freshers, who has been allotted highest number of 13 programmes, was reportedly a regular employee of the state government until recently.
Enquiries revealed that the SFC official had been booked by J&K State Vigilance Organisation in serious matters of corruption and embezzlement of public money as many as three times in the last 20 years. In one of such cases, he had clandestinely managed surrender of the prosecution against him and joined back years after he had been sacked. Even after investing huge money in television production, he joined back but was, years later, placed under suspension on account of his alleged involvement in multi-Crore timber extraction allotment scandal in SFC. Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad’s government finally terminated his services after Kundal Committee established his criminal involvement in a number of matters.
As recently as in June 2009, CBI in Srinagar booked four members of the ex-SFC official’s family and registered against them an FIR under sections 13(1) D of Prevention of Corruption Act and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) as sleuths of the Central agency seized thousands of tapes from the room of DDK Srinagar’s morning show (‘Subhai Subhai’) producer Ghulam Hassan Dar. DDK Srinagar had allegedly acquired as many 9,500 segments clandestinely from this particular family and was in the process of releasing the payments when CBI conducted the raid on a specific information and launched a detailed investigation.
Reports, of late, suggest that this family, with the support of some DDK Srinagar officials, has even managed to earn (or buy) good wishes of some CBI officials in Srinagar who have, reportedly, assured them to issue “No Involvement Certificate” after the matter cools off under the passage of time. Allegations have begun to pour in that officials of the agency had themselves discovered a goldmine in DDK Srinagar and in-house programmes were being allotted to them secretly on different front names.
With a “rich profile” in scandalous matters, members of the same family had been booked by CBI during the DD Kashir commissioning process eight years ago. They were arrested and lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail alongwith then Director of Programmes P K Dass and his junior Mumtaz Beg. Thereafter, CBI and Central Vigilance registered another criminal matter against them during the tenure of Director of Programmes, DD Kashir, Anurag Misra. However, with the advantage of their money power and close connections with senior officials in DD and Prasar Bharti Broadcasting Corporation, the accused either managed to weaken the cases against them or succeeded in getting scot free.
Sources revealed that in addition to the “Subhai Subhai” acquisition scandal, members of the same family and their relatives and employees have been entertained as “facility providers” of more than 200 in-house programmes at DDK Srinagar in the last 16 months, claiming payment of over Rs 70 Lakhs.
Attempts to get DD authorities’ comments did not succeed as Director DDK Srinagar, himself an accused before CBI, had his mobile phone continuously switched off and his office maintained that he was not present. Offices of DD’s Director General, Aruna Sharma, and DDG of DD Kashir, Ananya Banerjee, did not respond to phone calls from Srinagar.
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6 DIGs, Brigadiers killed in 20 years of J&K militancy
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 18: Army’s brigade commanders and Deputy Inspectors General (DIGs) of Police and paramilitary forces are the highest ranking officials killed by separatist militants in 20 years of armed insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir. While as Army has suffered the loss of 3 Brigadiers, followed by 2 DIGs of the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF), one-odd DIG of Jammu & Kashmir Police (JKP) was eliminated in a broad daylight shootout when he was coming out of a mosque in this capital city after performing his prayers on occasion of Idd-ul-azha five years ago.
Death of BSF’s DIG Provisioning and incharge Sector Commander in Samba-Ramnagar border belt in Jammu, Om Prakash Tanwar, on Monday last was the 6th fatal casualty in this category of high ranking officers in Police and armed forces in Jammu & Kashmir since eruption of the secessionist insurgency in 1988-89. DIG Tanwar’s vehicle was blown up by suspected militants, with possible support of regular forces on the International Border, in a landmine blast when senior officials of the force were conducting an inspection of the area following an attempt of infiltration by a group of militants. His subordinate Commanding Officer of a battalion had a providential escape as he had reportedly come out of the vehicle yards short of the death trap.
Brigadier Sreedhar of Baramulla-based 19th Infantry Division, who was commander of a Brigade, with its headquarters in Uri, was the first seniormost officer of armed forces who was eliminated much like DIG Tanwar in an equally powerful landmine blast close to LoC in Uri sector in March 1995.
The second fatal casualty occurred on 13th July, 1999, when militants introduced suicide strikes against armed forces in Jammu & Kashmir with a fidayeen attack on BSF’s headquarters of Sector-11 at Madar near Bandipore in north-east of the Valley. Sector Commander, DIG S K Chakravarty and Joint Assistant Director (G) Mohan Raj, Sub Inspector Bhaskar were among four BSF officials in the unprecedented gunbattle. A special contingent of National Security Guards (NSG) commandoes was flown in for the operation from New Delhi in addition to senior BSF officials, Army’s Marine Commandoes (Marcos) and different units of Army and BSF that participated in the 70-hour-long encounter with militants.
The suicide attack on the BSF camp in Bandipore, in which three militants also got killed, happened in the thick of Kargil War. J&K has till date witnessed nearly 80 fidayeen attacks on different camps of Army, BSF, CRPF, JKP besides non-military installations likeTourist Reception Srinagar, Passport Office Srinagar, Press Information Bureau complex Srinagar, Income Tax complex Srinagar, Radio Kashmir Srinagar, Raghunath Mandir Jammu and Railway Station Jammu.
Making an inspection of Sector-7 area in Kupwara district just three days after his joining at Drugmulla, Brig B S Shergil became the third major target of militants when they blew up his vehicle in an IED blast on Zachaldara-Handwara Road in then militant-infested Rajwar belt in north Kashmir on 21st August, 2000. He was killed alongwith three other Army officials accompanying him. They included Commanding Officer of Rashtriya Rifles 21 Bn, Col Rajinder Chauhan, who was under transfer and was on the last tour of his area of operation.
Armed forces in J&K suffered the worst ever damage when as many as 8 Army officials, including Brig V K Govil of 16 Corps, got killed in a suicide strike by militants on EME camp, Bangti (Tanda), on Akhnoor-Tanda Road, in Jammu division on 22nd July 2003. Senior Army commanders, including then General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Northern Command, Lt Gen Hari Prasad, Commander of Nagrota-based 16 Corps, Lt Gen T P S Brar, two Major Generals D Khanna and T K Sapru, Brigadier Baldev Singh of 10 RT Brigade and two more officers of the rank of Colonel had sustained injuries in this strike as one of the militants hiding behind Sarkanda grass blew himself up close to his targets.
Jammu and Kashmir Police has suffered the first and the last fatal casualty in this category of senior officers when militants gunned down DIG Crime & Railways, Mohammad Amin Bhat, in point blank range at Barzulla in Srinagar on 2nd February, 2004. On leave because of Idd-ul-Azha, DIG Bhat was unarmed and in his civvies when he was killed like a lame duck. As he was coming out of a mosque after performing his prayers on the day of Idd, two unidentified militants fired upon him, killing him on the spot.
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Mirwaiz, colleagues meet Chidambaram in Delhi
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 16: Second round of a secret dialogue between Mirwaiz Umar Farooq-led faction of the separatist Hurriyat Conference with the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram has taken place in New Delhi on Saturday, days before the cleric-politician is scheduled to visit Pakistan. Highly placed sources, believed to be well informed of the new development, revealed to Early Times that Mirwaiz was accompanied by his Hurriyat confidante Bilal Gani Lone and former Chairman of the conglomerate, Prof Abdul Gani Bhat.
According to these sources, Mirwaiz, Lone and Bhat got together at Khan Market---also frequently visited by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his family---a little after mid-day and an official car without number plate drove them straight to the nearby Lodhi Estate where Home Minister Chidambaram held a secret meeting with the Kashmiri separatist leaders at a safe house. The meeting lasted for two hours, sources said but claimed to have no knowledge of what had transpired between the two sides.
As agreed in a contact between the two, Central and state security and intelligence agencies, who normally maintain watch on the Hurriyat leaders, were directed to clear out at 1100 hours. Accordingly, there was no visible security or intelligence cover, sources said.
Even as nobody from the Hurriyat responded to phone calls, sources close to Mirwaiz maintained that no such meeting had taken place between the Chairman and the Union Home Minister. “These are deliberate leaks being floated by officials in Omar Abdullah’s governments who do not seem to be sincere in their talk of restoration of the dialogue process with the Kashmiri leadership”, said a senior separatist leader wishing anonymity. He said that Mirwaiz Umar’s detractors in a rival Hurriyat camp had also shown a lot of enthusiasm in trumpeting about a meeting he had, according to a New Delhi report, held with Chidambaram before his departure for participation in the OIC meeting in New York last month.
Amid Chidambaram’s refrain of “quiet diplomacy”, former RAW chief A S Dullat and former Pakistani High Commissioner, Aziz Ahmed Khan, have reportedly held three rounds of talks in Bangkok. Khan was last month in Srinagar where he participated an Indo-Pakistan civil society conference and also held at least two meetings with Mirwaiz and Governor N N Vohra, separately. He was also joined in both meetings by a former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan.
After days of his hectic political activity in Doda and Kishtwar districts in Muslim-dominated parts of Jammu region, followed by a three-day visit to New Delhi, Mirwaiz today reached here back and joined the funeral of prominent journalist and editor of ‘Srinagar Times’ Sofi Ghulam Mohammad. He also led the Namaaz-e-Janaazah.
Sources close to Mirwaiz said that the Hurriyat Executive Council would meet here on Wednesday to discuss his forthcoming visit to Pakistan as also to constitute a team of senior separatist leaders who would be accompanying the Hurriyat chief.
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ET OBITUARY
GM Sofi: An icon and iconoclast
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 16: After reading him regularly for nearly three decades, it was in 2004 that I discovered in him as a good human being and neighbour when we shared a room for about a week at a hotel in London. Until then, I knew Sofi Ghulam Mohammad as an extremely ambitious journalist who had mastery in making the powers that be bow. Inspite of being impressed with his powerful editorials and earlier day scoops---blindness disease in Karnah and selling of Bengali women in Valley---I often thought that his without his brother Bashir Ahmed Bashir’s cartoons, ‘Srinagar Times’ would have been nothing different from Nand Lal Wattal’s ‘Khidmat’, Aziz Kashmiris’ ‘Roshni’ or his old colleague G R Irfani’s ‘Naya Sansar’. Then I learned how Sofi was not only born great but also how greatness does follow such people in all times.
On a couple of occasions, I felt nervous as the 80-year-old did for me (in my absence) what only your caring mothers and domestic helps do. I had little knowledge how great a neighbour he was for her at Buchhwara but, thousands of miles away from home, he looked like father of a broadcaster working at the BBC. Close to his check out, he took out a meticulously preserved container and told me that it had to be delivered at Bush House at any cost. Then I learned that it was a pack of sumptuous Kashmiri waazwaan Sofi had carried all the way from Srinagar. I knew its importance as I had the experience of such things being thrown away by even one’s family members due to time constraints.
Even as he could not visit Bush House and his neighbour could not come to the hotel due to a sprain, Sofi Sahab did not take rest until the gift from home reached the broadcaster.
My 31-year-long association with Sofi Ghulam Mohammad had begun in late 1970s when as a rebel student at the school I took strong objection to ST’s edit page assault on Maulvi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari for having walked out in protest at an official function. Ansari had left the auditorium at Women’s College when a group of the girl students presented a dance item before President of India and then Chief Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. I penned a ripper on Sofi’s column “Iftikhar ka Ehtijaj” and went straight to get it published in Shameem Ahmed Shameem’s “Aayina”. I knew Sofi and Shameem were at draggers drawn.
Contrary to my high expectations, Shameem brought it home to me that the reaction needed to appear in ST alone. “If Sofi Sahab does not publish, come back to me”, Shameem advised.
Getting upstairs, I was certain that the cantankerous editor would not only tear my papers but would also thrash me to pulp. Captioned “Srinagar Times ek baday jurm kii parda poshi kar raha hai”, the two-part write up made Sofi read up to the end. “Excellent. Excellent. Keep it up young boy”, he exclaimed in appreciation and gave me a pat. I still apprehended it would follow with a slap and abuse. It really didn’t. Next morning, I was taken aback to find the piece without editing a punctuation in the ST. Part-2 appeared the day after but stirred a hornet’s nest as Sheikh’s aficionado Sadiq Ali wrote a bitter rejoinder. It was soon followed by a battery of ghost writers.
That Sofi was an indomitable journalist was proved when the gunmen claiming to be representatives of the Kashmiri people began targeting him, first with threats and later with guns and grenades. He had the distinction of being the first journalist to receive a bullet wrapped in a piece of paper. Azam Inquillabi’s note to the editor---perhaps days before Rubaiyya Sayeed kidnapping--- asked Sofi Sahab to choose between death and publishing the militants’ statements verbatim.
Sofi’s half-heartedly toeing the militants’ line failed him to get the recognition of a “freedom loving” scribe. As he began showing limits to his bending and taking the diktats blindly---and set up parallel office at his home---, he was subjected to at least four unsuccessful attempts on his life. The last one happened at his home office when the octogenarian scribe had a physical scuffle with the armed assailant. Pushed to the wall, Sofi developed interest in active politics, was nominated as Member of Legislative Council by then Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed but restricted himself to projecting only the matters of high public interest and importance.
While being a nominee of then ruling coalition, Sofi launched a bitter campaign against Mufti’s powerful ministerial colleagues, notably Ghulam Hassan Mir and Hakeem Mohammad Yasin.
Sofi Sahab revealed to me on more than one occasion that he had been reading my previous newspaper for two things: “Your incisive reports and Page 2, that tells me who among the Kashmiri Pandits has passed away in the last 24 hours”. Notwithstanding his 1990-days phrases like “mafroor Pandit”, “Mukhbir” et al, I had discovered a passion in Sofi Sahab for Kashmir’s composite culture and plural society.
“I feel as if our arms and legs have been amputated”, he told me once while bemoaning on the mass migration of Kashmiri Pandits. “It will be a great favour if you carry my brother’s obituary on page 2 of your newspaper”, he said on the day of journalist-historian Sofi Ghulam Mohiuddin’s demise three years ago and made it a point that the news of his death reached every member of the displaced Pandit community in Jammu, Udhampur, Delhi and other places.
It is definitely not for nothing that Kashmir’s who’s who from Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Geelani to Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah, from Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to a number of his ministerial colleagues today joined the ranks of Sofi Sahab’s Namaaz-e-Janazah on the Boulevard.
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Mirwaiz lieutenants again in the eye of a storm
Efforts underway to isolate Prof Gani, Bilal Lone, Abbas Ansari, Fazal Haq
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 15: Much like last year’s turbulence on controversial allotment of land to Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board, faces of moderate politics in the Kashmiri separatist camp are once again being isolated not only by Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s hardline faction of the Hurriyat Conference but also by many in Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s own conglomerate. Obviously encouraged by the space created by Omar Abdullah-led coalition government for Mr Geelani, pro-unification leaders like Shabir Ahmed Shah and Nayeem Ahmed Khan have begun efforts to neutralize the Hurriyat (M) foursome---Prof Abdul Gani Bhat, Bilal Gani Lone, Maulana Abbas Ansari and Fazal Haq Qureishi---amid speculations of Mirwaiz joining a dialogue process and “secret diplomacy” with New Delhi and Islamabad for working out a resolution of the Kashmir crisis.
With the mercury dipping fast, summer capital has suddenly become venue for hot political activity of the separatist camp. In the past three days, at least four conferences have been held here on the role of “resistance leaders”---a phrase coined by a section of media for the politicians struggling for Kashmir’s separation from the Indian sovereignty. Even as representatives of almost all the separatist outfits are being invited by the organizers, hardliners like Geelani and Dukhtaraan-e-Millat chief, Asiya Andrabi, besides President of High Court Bar Association, Mian Abdul Qayoom, are invariably the star speakers.
Asiya has launched fresh tirade against Mirwaiz, alleging that the young separatist leader was going to take the Pakistani leadership into confidence so as to get Islamabad’s approval to New Delhi’s plans on Kashmir. According to her, Mirwaiz had set off with an Indian agenda.
One more platform came handy today on occasion of the 4th day ceremony of Prof Ghulam Mohammad Sheikh who passed away last week. Speaking in the well-attended condolence meeting, Geelani announced that a major conference would be organized on the campus of University of Kashmir on occasion of Chehlum (40th day ceremony) of late Prof Sheikh. Laying emphasis on more public support to his current campaign against demilitarization, Geelani made it clear that the Kashmiris had just one goal---Azadi barai Islam---and, according to him, there was “absolutely no scope” for secularism in the “freedom movement”.
Strongly dismissing New Delhi’s latest offer of talks with the Kashmiri leadership---received enthusiastically by major mainstream parties as also a positive nod from Mirwaiz---Geelani asserted that implementation of the UN resolutions was the “one and the only one solution to the Kashmir dispute”. At all of his gatherings in the last few days, Geelani has repeatedly suggested that with his tacit approval of Home Minister P Chidambarm’s offer of bilateral dialogue, Mirwaiz had violated not only the Hurriyat’s birth day rider but also an agreement signed by leaders of the two factions in June 2008. According to him, Mirwaiz had accepted in black-and-white that his faction would not participate in any bilateral dialogue process with India or Pakistan.
In his keynote address at a seminar organized by his political outfit Muslim League, former Hizbullah commander Mushtaq-ul-Islam made a frontal attack on the Hurriyat (Mirwaiz) leaders----Prof Bhat, Bilal Lone, Maulana Ansari and Fazal Haq---with the allegation that their activities were harmful for the “freedom movement”. Dukhtaraan chief, Asiya Andrabi has expressed identical views in a couple of these conferences and asked for isolating the “traitors”. Architect of last year’s unification process of the Hurriyat factions, Shabir Shah today thundered at Muslim League seminar that it was “high time to identify and isolate the traitors”.
In his obvious attack on the Mirwaiz lieutenants, Shabir Shah did not name any “traitors” but asserted that there was “absolutely no scope of any quiet diplomacy or bilateral talks” in the Valley’s separatist camp. He claimed that New Delhi’s and Omar Abdullah-led coalition government’s latest refrain of dialogue with the Kashmiri leaders was “patently contrary to the Hurriyat constitution and last year’s agreement between two factions of the amalgamation”. Informed sources insist that some constituents of Mirwaiz-led Hurriyat were in full agreement with the views being publicly expressed by Mr Geelani and constituents of his alliance.
Even the separatists, who have maintained neutrality and have stayed away from joining either faction of the conglomerate that split in 2003, have begun to lend support to Geelani’s ideology. Significantly, Jamiat Ahle-Hadith chief Maulana Showkat---commonly known as Yasin Malik’s friend and Geelani’s detractor---today said at the two-day conference of his organization that there was no point in participating in secret diplomacy or bilateral talks. Using Geelani’s, Asiya’s and Shabir Shah’s phraseology verbatim, Maulana Showkat dismissed the UPA government’s offer of Delhi-Srinagar talks as a “completely futile exercise”.
Stressing on Pakistan’s participation and making it a tripartite process, Maulana Showkat asserted that the Kashmir problem’s solution lay in nothing but implementation of the UN resolutions. According to him, people of the state should be given right of self-determination, asking them whether they were for accession to Pakistan or India.
Mirwaiz has, meanwhile, attended a meeting with the Pakistani High Commissioner at New Delhi today, raising speculation of his visit to Islamabad in a few days. His faction of the Hurriyat is meeting here on Wednesday next to select the leaders of Mirwaiz-led delegation. Playing down frontal attacks from the radical camp, Mirwaiz has not so far defended his colleagues who chose to remain in oblivion during last year’s Amarnath turbulence.
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BJP kettle calling the Hurriyat pot black!
When Chancellors and Pro Chancellors fail, Vice Chancellors can be no different
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 14: Separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s visit to the Kashmir University (KU) campus, inspection of Iqbal Library and a fiery speech at a gathering of the students and officials has stirred a hornet’s nest in the BJP. MLA and President of the party, Ashok Khajuria did not waste a minute in demanding action against Vice Chancellor Prof Riyaz Punjabi. He has publicly complained that Chief Minister and Pro Chancellor Omar Abdullah had allowed KU to become ‘a den of anti-Indian propaganda’ by permitting radical separatists like Geelani to address students and officials.
Fact of the matter is that almost all Chancellors (Governors) and Pro Chancellors (Chief Ministers) have failed to discharge their responsibility of protecting the sanctity of the institutions of learning in the strife-torn Jammu & Kashmir in the last two decades. Understandably, the Vice Chancellors of KU and Jammu University (JU) have either played the politics of appeasement or completely surrendered before the actors whose politics has been patently parochial. Communal and regional divide between two faiths and provinces has been the corner stone of this politics that has been flourishing in the name of democracy and functional autonomy of the universities.
KU is better placed in the sense that its students do not have a recognized union since 1980s and its teachers have not directly practiced party politics on the campus. Services of then lecturer of nuclear physics, Dr Ayub Thakur were terminated after he escorted some leaders of the Iranian revolution in the Valley, organized a rally of students and staff on the campus 25 years ago. In 1990-92, Prof Abdul Ahad Wani of the Department of Law and Mohammad Shafi Khan of the Department of Persian associated themselves with JKLF and Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen respectively. While as Wani was gunned down, allegedly by guerrillas of a rival outfit, Khan has been continuously in jail.
Dukhtaraan-e-Millat chief Asiya Andrabi’s brother, Dr Anaytullah Andrabi, gave up his job at KU and settled in London over a decade ago. Students and members of faculty have been in the forefront of anti-India and pro-Azadi feelings---and occasionally demonstrations---but they have not formally joined parties the way quite a number of their counterparts in JU have done in the winter capital. Former VC Prof Jalees Tareen had observed at an official function that KU had the distinction of being the country’s one-odd university which had not slogans of political parties painted on its boundary walls.
Jalees paradoxically headed to an unceremonious exit as he asserted to enforce discipline by disturbing a powerful lobby of academics and students “indulging in objectionable political practice”.
Things phenomenally deteriorated during the tenures of his successors to the extent that one of the Professors of the Department of Law confronted former Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah, denigrated him as “an advocate of Indian forces” and asked him to “shut up and sit down” on occasion of the inauguration of KU’s Convocation Hall three years ago. This all happened not only in presence of the host and VC, Prof Abdul Wahid Qureishi, but also the chief guest and Chancellor, Governor S K Sinha.
Authorities at a lower level maintain that no action can be taken against the “pro-Azadi” faculty and students until one was initiated against the political practitioners in JU. It has been widely observed and pointed out in the last three days that Mr Khajuria has expressed his indignation over Mr Geelani’s Hazratbal visit and sought “restoration of KU’s sanctity” in just three months of the RSS conclave at JU. Nobody appears to be listening to RSS and BJP leaders’ argument that RSS had hired JU’s Zorawar Singh Auditorium against “cash payment” and that there was nothing “anti-national” at the gathering.
The bigger fact remains that a large number of political practitioners, including those of JU’s different faculties, participated in the congregation that was addressed by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, BJP President, Rajnath Singh, and many others from Sangh Parivar, whose politics and beliefs in terms of region and religion have been patently parochial in J&K.
State’s largest political parties, including National Conference, PDP and Congress, have stayed away and creditably made little attempts to tamper with the sanctity of universities in J&K. With the exception of Congress party’s NSUI, they have not even set up student wings at the institutions of learning. On the other hand, Prof Nirmal Singh of the Department of History and Naresh Padha have established and expanded BJP’s student wing, Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) at JU over two decades ago. Prof Virender Gupta (Retd) of the Departments of Physics outsmarted even senior leaders of Prof Bhim Singh’s National Panthers Party while operating the politics of Jammu’s separate statehood from this platform for several years.
Emboldened by encouragement and appeasement from successive governments, Prof Nirmal Singh subsequently rose to become BJP’s state President and participated in four Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, including those of the current year. Having never been on leave, Prof Singh has been continuously working as a regular teacher with JU. He has been, of late, succeeded as state President of BJP by Mr Kahjuria but has been continuously and proudly working for the party.
Prof Singh found another BJP ideologue in Prof Hari Om of the Department of History who worked more for a party than his university until he made a volte face last year and shifted his loyalties to Congress. He is continuing as head of his department’s Maharaja Gulab Singh Chair in JU. After her not-so-active association with the party, Prof Nirmal Gupta of the Department of Economics joined BJP during Amarnath land row in 2008, months before she reached superannuation at JU. In this war of black kettles and pots, Prof Singh and Prof Hari Om have been taking objection to three of the KU professors enjoying the freedom of making India bashing at international conferences, including few organized by United Nations.
Expecting a government, that has failed to appoint a VC for Islamic University of Science & Technology, Awantipore, in the last 10 months and allowed a PDP promotee to continue in office for 15 months after expiry of his term, may be naïveté. It was only then Chief Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah who used his powers as Pro Chancellor and appointed two commissions---one headed by former IGP J&K, L D Thakur, and another by eminent diplomat and one-time VC of Aligarh Muslim University, Badaruddin Tayyabji---respectively to inquire into a rift between Prof Abdul Ahad Wani and Prof Saifuddin Soz that had affected the academic atmosphere at KU and to propose plans for the university’s academic development.
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EARLY TIMES IMPACT
Speaker asks CS to close unauthorized kilns in Budgam
‘Nexus between officials and brick kiln owners not acceptable in a civilized society’
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
JAMMU, Nov 12: Taking suo moto cognizance of Early Times campaign against ecological vandalism in Kashmir valley, Speaker of Legislative Assembly, Mohammad Akbar Lone, has asked Chief Secretary, S S Kapur, to close down all unauthorized brick kilns in Budgam district. He has made it clear on the head of the administration and state bureaucracy that a “nexus between the departments and the brick kiln owners” was not acceptable in a civilized society.
In an environmental series in its issues dated October 8th, 9th and 13th, Early Times had reported in detail how as many as 155 brick kilns had been set up in Budgam district in brazen violation of over a dozen laws and the same were operating without license and necessary Consent to Establish (CTE) and Consent to Operate (CTO) from J&K State Pollution Control Board (PCB).
Highly placed sources in the state government said that Chief Secretary S S Kapur has received Speaker’s DO NO: LA/J/Spk/06/09 dated 10-11-2009, inviting his attention to wanton ecological vandalism in Budgam district and asking him to close down all unauthorized brick kilns. Speaker is understood to have written to the CS that during a recent tour in Budgam district, he had learned from complaining delegations and observed personally that a large number of brick kilns had been set up “in utter violation of the prescribed rules and regulations in connivance with the concerned departments, thereby causing a lot of inconvenience to the people there”.
“Such a tendency needs to be curbed with a heavy hand to save the state from the cruel hands of the said mafia. This issue, it may be pointed here, was also carried by a leading newspaper, namely EARLY TIMES repeatedly to draw the attention of the authorities at the helm (copies of the relevant press clippings are enclosed for ease of reference) but unfortunately such a serious issue has not been taken care of till date”, Speaker has written to Mr Kapur.
“As a matter of fact, the life of the adjacent people has become miserable by way of emitting the health hazardous intoxicants in the shape of harmful gases by these kilns. Moreover the pollution caused by these brick kilns besides making the life hell has to a large extent damaged the paddy fields and orchards in the area. If this menace continues, there may not be any land available with our future generations for agricultural purposes’, Speaker has recorded in his letter and pointed out Government was spending huge amounts out of state exchequer on functioning of the departments responsible for environmental protection and enforcement of other laws being violated.
“The concern shown by the people of these villages is genuine and justified and needs your kind intervention to ensure a proper and timely action so that the jinx of destruction and disturbance of the natural conservation of environment in these villages could be restricted at the earliest”, Speaker has written and asked Chief Secretary to constitute a committee, comprising officers of good reputation and integrity, “to conduct a thorough probe and find out reasons for setting up of these unauthorized and illegal brick kilns in this area and submit a report to this effect to you within a stipulated period of one month, enabling the state government to take further necessary steps to check this menace forthwith so that the local people would take a sigh of relief from the cruel jaws of enemies of the nature”. Mr Kapur has been asked to furnish a report of the said committee to the Speaker.
In the environmental series, that has for the first time influenced Speaker of Legislative Assembly to make a wake-up call on the Chief Secretary, this correspond had reported in detail how officials of different government departments---notably PCB, Police, Revenue, Environment & Remote Sensing, Power Development Department, Industries, Geology & Mining, Irrigation, PHE and Commercial Taxes---had conveniently shut their eyes to establishment and operation of as many as 155 unauthorized and completely illegal brick kilns in Budgam. It had been reported, on the public complaints and source inputs, that a number of officers directly responsible for violation of 12 particular laws had been collecting bribes, in cash and kind, from the operators of the unauthorized brick kilns and leaving their business intact.
It had also been reported in detail how these kilns had been emitting carcinogenic and other gases, dangerously harmful to human and animal life, agriculture and horticulture, while using the static iron chimneys banned by Supreme Court of India over four years go and also substandard fuel including rubber tyres.
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Geelani gatecrashes into KU, delivers lecture on Azadi
Takes oath from students, calls NC etc ‘murderers of Kashmiris’
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 11: For the first time in his 50-year-long political career, separatist hardliner, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, today forced his entry into the campuses of University of Kashmir, described Jammu & Kashmir as a “disputed territory”, delivered a lecture on Azadi, took an oath of working for the state’s ‘freedom’ from India from a congregation of students and called Pro Vice Chancellor Omar Abdullah and his party, National Conference, as the “murderers of the Kashmiris”.
Going strictly according to his much publicized programme of addressing a congregation of the students and employees of the University of Kashmir, Hurriyat (G) Chairman and senior Jamaat-e-Islami ideologue, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, drove straight to the Hazratbal campus and forced his entry through a nominal Police barrier. Attracting a thick number of students, Geelani gate-crashed into the campus and addressed a multitude of students in front of Iqbal Library. Reports said that hundreds of students of different post-graduate courses and members of the University staff formed Geelani’s audience.
In his fiery speech, just 200 yards from Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s mausoleum, Geelani called Chief Minister and KU Pro Chancellor Omar Abdullah’s National Conference (NC), Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP, Congress and other pro-India political parties as the “murderers of the Kashmiris” and held them responsible for strengthening “Indian occupation” on Jammu & Kashmir. Obviously in a quick reaction to the rival Hurriyat leader Prof Abdul Gani Bhat’s suggestion of all mainstream and separatist organizations working out a joint formula for resolution of the Kashmir crisis, Geelani asserted that there was “absolutely no meeting ground” between the two.
“Pro-India parties including National Conference, PDP and Congress have their hands soaked with the blood of innocent Kashmiris. Hurriyat is representing the poor freedom-loving people. How can both meet, share a platform and work on a joint formula?”, Geelani asked his enthusiastic audiences. He asserted that “one Lakh Kashmiris” had not laid down their lives for autonomy, self-rule or former Pakistani President Pervaiz Musharraf’s 4-point formula. According to him, a lasting and formidable solution lay in nothing other than implementation of the 60-year-old UN resolution, asking people of undivided state of Jmmu & Kashmir whether the were in favour of accession to India or Pakistan.
Geelani claimed that New Delhi’s current suggestions of dialogue with the Kashmiris were the result of world pressure on India. “This is all, in fact, a ploy to hoodwink the world, particularly the United Nations”, Geelani said and asserted that there was neither sincerity nor seriousness in Government of India’s refrain of holding a dialogue with the Kashmiris. According to him, the first test of India’s sincerity would be declaring entire Jammu & Kashmir as a “disputed territory” and withdrawing troops from J&K.
Amid shouting of pro-freedom slogans, Geelani took an oath from the multitude of students and University employees to work for “freedom from India” and asked them to form a union that, according to his desire, would work for Islam and Azadi. He got an affirmation from his audience.
Justifying Hurriyat’s frequent calls for shutdown, Geelani said that a hartal was the “last weapon in our hands, to register our protest against India’s occupation and human rights abuse of her armed forces”. He said that militants were doing their own job with their arms while as Hurriyat was engaged in a peaceful struggle for freedom.
Geelani, nevertheless, complained that the Kashmiris were poor in their resolution as, only last year, hundreds of thousands of them had demanded freedom from India on the streets but in quick succession same numbers of the people had participated in the Assembly elections conducted by Election Commission of India. “Be resolute and consistent in your demand of Azadi”, Geelani advised the Kashmiris.
On his departure, Geelani was taken into custody by Police near Sheikh Abdullah’s mausoleum and whisked away to Humhama Police Station. Valley has witnessed this drill, which invariably follows with Geelani’s release, over a dozen times since he was let off from a formal imprisonment few months back.
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Geelani, Mirwaiz trash Omar’s monologue on dialogue
Hurriyat dares CM to pass 6-point formula in J&K Assembly
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 10: Both factions of Hurriyat Conference have pooh-poohed Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s PDP-brand refrain on New Delhi’s dialogue with the separatist leadership even as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has dared him to pass his 6-point formula in J&K Legislative Assembly if head of the coalition government was really sincere in his recently made public utterances.
Hardline Hurriyat chief, Geelani has characteristically trashed union Home Minister P Chidambarm and J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s newfound refrain on “quiet diplomacy” and asserted that there was, as usual, neither sincerity nor seriousness in the ruling coalition’s statements. “It’s all an exercise in futility. Bilateral talks on Kashmir problem have invariably ended up in failure. Real solution lies in tripartite talks between India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris or implementation of the UN resolutions”, Geelani told local news agency, Kashmir News Service.
Geelani said that his faction of the Hurriyat Conference would respond positively and engage itself in a dialogue process if Government of India declared Kashmir as a disputed territory and sounded sincere in holding talks with the Kashmiri leadership. He asserted that Hurriyat would never participate in the talks which ran contrary to its constitution. “They are, in fact, misleading the world with such hollow utterances”, Geelani is reported to have said in reaction to the coalition leadership’s recent statements on “quiet diplomacy” and willingness to talk to all cross-sections of public opinion, including the separatist leadership.
Refusing to accept it as the Government’s obligation, Geelani said that an international passport had been issued to him first time after 1981 but it was all meaningless as, according to him, there was continuous Police siege around his house in Hyderpora and he was not being allowed to budge an inch outside the premises. He has, of late, approached J&K High Court, seeking “withdrawal of the Police siege”. A commissioner appointed by the court today made an inspection but did not found any Police presence. Geelani’s spokesman Ayaz Akbar claimed that Police had lifted the siege minutes before the commissioner’s arrival.
In his immediate reaction to the Chief Minister’s statement made at his news conference in Jammu on Monday, Mirwaiz too claimed that there was little sincerity and seriousness in the coalition leaders’ refrain of holding talks with the Kashmiri leadership. “If National Conference and PDP are really serious in their public utterances, which keep changing with every passing moment, they better pass Hurriyat’s 6-point formula in their Assembly”, Chairman of so-called moderate faction of the Hurriyat, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said. He, significantly, did not sound to be critical of “quiet diplomacy” and said that Hurriyat was not afraid of “any talks whether held publicly or secretly”.
Informed sources, meanwhile, revealed to Early Times that Mirwaiz had conveyed his “displeasure” to the UPA leadership in New Delhi over “derailing the dialogue process well before it has started”. He is understood to have taken umbrage over reports that claimed the Hurriyat chief had met Home Minister Chidambaram last month before his departure for London.
Reports from south Kashmir said that another prominent separatist leader, Shabir Shah, has asked NC and PDP leaders to step down and join the ranks of the separatist leadership if they were sincere in holding talks with “pro-freedom leaders”.
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Mufti’s khul ja SIM SIM and Geelani’s ghar kab jaoge?
Why both slogans are failing to generate Ragda-III in Kashmir
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 8: Apparently taking advantage of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s limited access to understanding of ground realities in Valley and the level of confidence he has exuded over the last 10 months of his maiden regime, mainstream as well as the separatist opposition have been floating assortments of issues and non-issues in Jammu & Kashmir. Creation of a new theatre of regional and communal divide has been, however, elusive for both after the resolution of Amarnath Shrine Board land allotment crisis last year.
Alleged rape-cum-murder of two young women in Shopian shook the Valley for a couple of months in the middle of current year but revelation of a lady doctor’s unethical act of fudging the vaginal smears with a nefarious design took the sting out from the outrage in a few weeks. The outcry, locally known as Ragda-II, faded out further after a team of forensic experts from AIIMS and CFSL exhumed the bodies in presence of a local doctor, nominated by Majlis-e-Mushawarat Shopian, and, according to reports not refuted by CBI, found biological evidence of the unmarried girl’s virginity.
Characters of a love-hate relationship, PDP patriarch Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Hurriyat (G) supremo Syed Ali Shah Geelani, have been remarkably in a competition to steel the show with identical issues. Interestingly, none other than PDP’s ideologue and former Chief Minister, Muzaffar Hussain Baig, has solved the mystery of this uniformity by revealing in a television programme last week that his party was doing the service of “occupying the space Hurriyat would have captured”.
Geelani had the advantage of being in detention when Mufti and his party were humbled by hundreds of thousands of the Kashmiris by their proscribed participation in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. In September 2008, PDP had taken the lead over Hurriyat by claiming that nobody in the Valley would participate in the elections as the Kashmiris, according to it, had not been taken on board by Governor N N Vohra’s establishment while resolving the land crisis and inking a deal with “representatives of just one community and region”.
A host of speculations with regard to security of Durbar Move staff failed to prevent the Kashmiri employees from proceeding to the winter capital. Not one untoward incident happened for six months of the seat of power being in Jammu.
Ever since the two elections, that swapped the places of National Conference (NC) and PDP, Mufti’s party appears to be confused whether to emerge as NC’s secular alternative or to exist and expand as Hurriyat’s Muslim-centric, Valley-centric mainstream parallel. It has, in the process, failed in both. Its silver lining, admittedly, lies in the fact that the NC’s cadres are as demoralized and disempowered as in previous six years, the government by many indications appears to be that of any party other than the NC and Congress and the anti-incumbency factor is swelling, though not phenomenally in the first year of the coalition regime.
Nobody in the ruling coalition appears to be sensitive to things like most of the government jobs being grabbed by people through corrupt practices and the writ of mainstream as well as the secessionist opposition running far larger than Omar Abdullah’s government and party---from matters of transfers and appointments to government contracts and supply orders.
Chief Minister, and consequently all Ministers of his Council, have been playing the politics of apology and defence as most of their policies and decisions seem to be influenced either by men of slapdash knowledge about Kashmir’s politics or by dangerously subjective reports and editorial comments in newspapers. In his futile attempts of outwitting arch rival PDP, Omar Abdullah has spent more time in calling for dialogue with the largely marginalized separatist leadership than interacting with the ordinary man in Valley and Jammu, who has given him the mandate and responsibility of solving his mundane problems.
From continued recession in Pakistan’s terror market---that is meteorically increasing with every singe blast in Punjab and NWFP and military action in FATA and PATA---to the aftermath of J&K elections, Omar has all indicators of the situation in his favour. He seems to be more comfortable with his Big Brother in Delhi than Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mufti Sayeed and Farooq Abdullah. Why should he be more loyal than the king that once was?
Even a lay man on the street in Srinagar knows that Kashmir’s political resolution can come only in a meaningful dialogue process that ideally means between BJP-led rightist leadership in Delhi and a strong military leadership in Islamabad. Delhi’s and Islamabad’s casual labourers in Srinagar and Jammu do have the role of playing just background music to any settlement worked out by the two countries.
It does not need four eyes to see that PDP is failing even in making a big issue of the ban on prepaid mobile services that has directly affected over three million people in the state. More subscribers have perhaps realized that Home Minister Chidambaram’s decision has been seriously influenced by security concerns New Delhi would hardly compromise. They seem to be more concerned over poor connectivity and speech quality in J&K than an end to prepaid services.
On the other hand, Geelani has successfully hijacked Mufti’s slogan of demilitarization and his call for district-wise shutdown has evoked some response but, for the time being and months of near future, a major turbulence in the Valley is nowhere in sight.
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Geelani spits on Farooq’s offer of dialogue
‘Sheikh Abdullah and NC are traitors who sold off Kashmir to India’
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 7: Treating the National Conference patriarch and Union Minister of New & Renewable Energy Dr Farooq Abdullah’s advice of accepting New Delhi’s offer of resolving the Kashmir crisis through a negotiation process, separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani today asserted that the “Kashmiri peoples’ struggle for freedom from India” would continue in absence of any a “meaningful dialogue process”. He called Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, his progeny and political party “traitors responsible for selling off Kashmir to India” and claimed that men like Farooq Abdullah had no business to send him offers and advices.
Addressing a Muslim League sponsored seminar in memory of “martyrs of Jammu” (men of Muslim community killed in communal riots of 1947), Chairman of the hardline faction of Hurriyat Conference and former Jamaat-e-Islami ideologue, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, lashed out at Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, his progeny and National Conference (NC) and held them responsible for having sold off Kashmir to India for power. Obviously responding to Dr Abdullah’s offer of joining a dialogue process with the Centre, that had come at the union cabinet Minister’s news conference last evening, Geelani asserted that “traitors like Farooq Abdullah” had no business to send him advices and offers of a dialogue on the Kashmir dispute.
Geelani said that Sheikh Abdullah, his party and progeny had stabbed the Kashmiris in their back by “selling off Kashmir to India for power”. “We have no ambitions for power. Ours is the struggle for freedom. It will continue till we achieve our goal”, Geelani said and sweared that he would never commit treason with the people of Kashmir and “thousands of martyrs who have contributed their blood to the freedom struggle”. He said that Farooq Abdullah and others of his clan were the messengers of secular politics and added that there was no room for “la deen siasat” (secularism) in the “Kashmiris’ freedom struggle”.
Geelani asserted that his fresh campaign for total demilitarization in Jammu & Kashmir was phase one of a greater struggle. He said that he would not take rest until the last Indian soldier was withdrawn from Jammu & Kashmir. “Those advising me for mercy to the Kshmiris have brought in Army and strengthened the Indian occupation on Kashmir. How do they have temerity to advise us on peace and dialogue?” Geelani asked with an obvious reference to Dr Abdullah.
Commenting on Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s recent offer of dialogue, made in Srinagar last fortnight, Geelani said that Government of India had never initiated a “sincere and meaningful” dialogue process with the Kashmiris. “It is all bound to be an exercise in futility if held like a host of dialogue processes witnessed in the past”, Geelani added. He cautioned pro-dialogue Kashmiri separatist leaders to realize that their mistake (of holding talks with the Centre without J&K being declared as disputed and without associating Pakistan with the process) would have the potential of making the Kashmiris cry for centuries.
Geelani said that if Government of India was really sincere in resolving the Kashmir dispute by way of a dialogue process, it should immediately involve Pakistan and make it a tripartite initiative, begin withdrawal of its troops from J&K and release all political detainees.
The seminar was addressed on identical lines by President of High Court Bar Association, Mian Abdul Qayoom, Dukhtaraan-e-Millat supreme Asiya Andrabi and other separatist leaders and ideologues.
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HCBA threatens writ petition against CBI for ‘harassing’ lawyers
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 21: An advocate, appointed as Public Prosecutor in September 2009 by Omar Abdullah’s National Conference-led coalition government, as also his predecessor, appointed by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP-led coalition government in 2003, have surfaced on CBI’s radar even as the agency is understood to have completed its investigation in the alleged rape-cum-murder of two young women in Shopian and the search has begun for ‘conspirators’ who had created ‘false witnesses’, leading to turbulence in entire Kashmir valley for over two months. With CBI grilling seven Shopian-based advocates, including the present and former Public Prosecutors, High Court Bar Association (HCBA) has threatened to file a writ petition and also decided to proceed against two witnesses who have turned hostile after having got their statements recorded before a judicial magistrate.
Senior NC leader and Minister for Rural Development, Ali Mohammad Sagar, today asserted at a news conference here that his government would leave no stone unturned in identifying and punishing the “rapists and killers” of the two young woman in Shopian. He reiterated that his government, led by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, would ensure that none of the culprits succeeded to escape from the punishment he deserved. However, in a dramatic development, CBI has summoned and grilled seven Shopian-based advocates, including Mr Sagar’s appointee, Sheikh Mubarak, as also his predecessor, advocate Mushtaq Ahmed Gatoo, appointed as PP by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP government in 2003, for their allegedly causing harassment to some ‘witnesses’.
Others summoned and questioned for hours by a CBI team at its Humhama camp include President of Bar Association Shopian, advocate Abdul Majeed Mir, his predecessor, advocate Mohammad Yousuf Bhat, besides advocates Syed Aijaz Hussain, Mushtaq Ahmed and Shah Mansoor.
While as the PP, pursuing State’s cases at the court of District and Sessions Judge Shopian, Sheikh Mubarak, his predecessor as also sitting and former Presidents of Bar Association Shopian were grilled for over 12 hours on Wednesday last, advocates Aijaz, Mushtaq and Mansoor appeared before CBI today in compliance with a notice served on them earlier this week. As CBI has been barred by J&K High Court from disclosing its proceedings and observations, it was not clear as to what prompted the investigating agency to question the lawyers.
After a commission of inquiry, headed by retired judge of J&K High Court, Muzaffar Jan, and a Special Investigating Team (SIT) of J&K Police failed to find the culprits, state government had assigned the investigation to CBI in September last. Both women, 25-year-old Neelofar Jan w/o Shakeel Ahmed Ahangar, and 17-year-old Aasiya Jan, unmarried sister of Shakeel Ahmed Ahangar, had been found dead in Rambiara nullah in Shopian on May 30th, 2009. Amid wide allegations of ‘twin rape-cum-murder’ against Police and security forces, Valley had remained turbulent for several weeks. Nearly half-a-dozen civilians died and hundreds sustained injuries in resultant demonstrations.
Non-official sources insist that CBI had summoned and questioned the lawyers in the wake of fresh statements of two witnesses, namely Ghulam Mohiuddin and Abdul Rashid Pampori, who have turned hostile and charged the lawyers with causing them ‘harassment’ so as to give a particular statement that could frame certain Police officials. One of these witnesses said on television the other day that the lawyers, including President of Bar Association Shopian, had forced him to narrate that he had spotted a Tata-407 of Police at Rambiara and heard feminine “shrieks and screams” in the evening on May 29th. He claimed that it was all a concocted story, extorted from him under duress by both, members of Shopian Bar as well as the Public Prosecutors.
Both witnesses have backtracked from their previous statement, recorded in District and Sessions Court Shopian under Section 164 Cr PC earlier this year, and got a fresh statement recorded last week. Meanwhile, Dr Nighat Shaheen, who had claimed to have conducted per vaginal of the dead bodies on May 30h and declared publicly that both had been “victims of gang rape and murder”, has also changed her statements and made startling disclosures as to how she had fudged the vaginal swabs.
HCBA here has taken strong exception to CBI’s act of getting fresh statements recorded from the witnesses who had long back got their statements recorded before a judicial magistrate under section 164 Cr PC. Sources said that HCBA today held an emergency meeting over the fresh developments and questioned CBI’s authority of getting the statements recorded afresh and “causing harassment” to the lawyers. Sources said that HCBA chief threatened to file a writ petition before J&K High Court to challenge CBI’s authority as also District & Sessions Judge’s permission to get a fresh statement recorded from the witnesses turning hostile.
Sources said that HCBA also decided to proceed against the two witnesses under Section 199 of Indian Penal Code that makes any witness, who backtracks from his statement recorded before a judicial magistrate under Section 164 Cr PC, liable for the same punishment as due to the criminal in the matter by law.
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FIR after FIR by CBI, largesse after largesse by DD
Ex-SFC official’s family gets projects worth Rs 1 cr from Prasar Bharti
Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Nov 20: Different family members of a vigilance-tainted officer of Jammu & Kashmir State Forest Corporation (SFC), whose services were finally terminated by Ghulam Nabi Azad’s government on account of his serious indictment by Kundal Committee in 2007, have surfaced to be the beneficiaries of Doordarshan’s widely condemned commissioning for Kashir Channel. Even as Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been registering FIR after FIR against members of this family for their alleged involvement in multi-Crore scandals---latest being in June 2009---Ambika Soni’s national broadcaster has crossed all limits of showering undue favours on them, this time around Rs 1 Crore projects in DD Kashir.
Doordarshan authorities at ‘Mandi House’ in New Delhi have been continuously refusing to put the list of the allottees and their credentials on DD’s website but the list of the beneficiaries published in local newspapers as a paid advertisement by a group of private producers has made it public that at least four of them belong to the former SFC official’s family. They are clearly identifiable by their surname. Insiders insist that inspite of CBI having registered three criminal matters against them, DD Kashir’s head and incharge Deputy Director General (DDG), Ananya Banerjee, had been openly calling one of them as “my son”. Ms Banerjee has reportedly played key role in the dubious commissioning process that has dangerously eroded Doordarshan’s credibility among the intelligentsia in Jammu & Kashmir.
Informed sources revealed to Early Times that DDG Ananya Banerjee has succeeded in manipulating the commissioning process for DD Kashir and has allotted 40-50 programmes of budget ranging between Rs 2 to 3 Lakh directly to two sons of the former SFC official, his brother and nephew. The largesse has been expanded even to his nephew’s father-in-law who has never in his life either made a programme for DD or entered its premises. DDK Srinagar official, Gulab-ud-din Tahir, who had been hand-picked by Banerjee and associated with the commissioning process at ‘Mandi House’ in New Delhi, is reported to have issued more than 200 fake certificates, claiming that these ‘private producers’ had made hundreds of programmes which had been telecast by DDK Srinagar and DD Kashir.
According to these sources, some of the allottees are either completely anonymous or have joined as actors or assistants in the last 2-3 years but all of them have been allotted programmes on the basis of fake and fraudulent telecast certificates issued by GD Tahir. According to DD’s standing guidelines, private producers were eligible for empanelment of 2007-08 only if they had experience of five years in the field of television production. One of the freshers, who has been allotted highest number of 13 programmes, was reportedly a regular employee of the state government until recently.
Enquiries revealed that the SFC official had been booked by J&K State Vigilance Organisation in serious matters of corruption and embezzlement of public money as many as three times in the last 20 years. In one of such cases, he had clandestinely managed surrender of the prosecution against him and joined back years after he had been sacked. Even after investing huge money in television production, he joined back but was, years later, placed under suspension on account of his alleged involvement in multi-Crore timber extraction allotment scandal in SFC. Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad’s government finally terminated his services after Kundal Committee established his criminal involvement in a number of matters.
As recently as in June 2009, CBI in Srinagar booked four members of the ex-SFC official’s family and registered against them an FIR under sections 13(1) D of Prevention of Corruption Act and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) as sleuths of the Central agency seized thousands of tapes from the room of DDK Srinagar’s morning show (‘Subhai Subhai’) producer Ghulam Hassan Dar. DDK Srinagar had allegedly acquired as many 9,500 segments clandestinely from this particular family and was in the process of releasing the payments when CBI conducted the raid on a specific information and launched a detailed investigation.
Reports, of late, suggest that this family, with the support of some DDK Srinagar officials, has even managed to earn (or buy) good wishes of some CBI officials in Srinagar who have, reportedly, assured them to issue “No Involvement Certificate” after the matter cools off under the passage of time. Allegations have begun to pour in that officials of the agency had themselves discovered a goldmine in DDK Srinagar and in-house programmes were being allotted to them secretly on different front names.
With a “rich profile” in scandalous matters, members of the same family had been booked by CBI during the DD Kashir commissioning process eight years ago. They were arrested and lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail alongwith then Director of Programmes P K Dass and his junior Mumtaz Beg. Thereafter, CBI and Central Vigilance registered another criminal matter against them during the tenure of Director of Programmes, DD Kashir, Anurag Misra. However, with the advantage of their money power and close connections with senior officials in DD and Prasar Bharti Broadcasting Corporation, the accused either managed to weaken the cases against them or succeeded in getting scot free.
Sources revealed that in addition to the “Subhai Subhai” acquisition scandal, members of the same family and their relatives and employees have been entertained as “facility providers” of more than 200 in-house programmes at DDK Srinagar in the last 16 months, claiming payment of over Rs 70 Lakhs.
Attempts to get DD authorities’ comments did not succeed as Director DDK Srinagar, himself an accused before CBI, had his mobile phone continuously switched off and his office maintained that he was not present. Offices of DD’s Director General, Aruna Sharma, and DDG of DD Kashir, Ananya Banerjee, did not respond to phone calls from Srinagar.
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6 DIGs, Brigadiers killed in 20 years of J&K militancy
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 18: Army’s brigade commanders and Deputy Inspectors General (DIGs) of Police and paramilitary forces are the highest ranking officials killed by separatist militants in 20 years of armed insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir. While as Army has suffered the loss of 3 Brigadiers, followed by 2 DIGs of the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF), one-odd DIG of Jammu & Kashmir Police (JKP) was eliminated in a broad daylight shootout when he was coming out of a mosque in this capital city after performing his prayers on occasion of Idd-ul-azha five years ago.
Death of BSF’s DIG Provisioning and incharge Sector Commander in Samba-Ramnagar border belt in Jammu, Om Prakash Tanwar, on Monday last was the 6th fatal casualty in this category of high ranking officers in Police and armed forces in Jammu & Kashmir since eruption of the secessionist insurgency in 1988-89. DIG Tanwar’s vehicle was blown up by suspected militants, with possible support of regular forces on the International Border, in a landmine blast when senior officials of the force were conducting an inspection of the area following an attempt of infiltration by a group of militants. His subordinate Commanding Officer of a battalion had a providential escape as he had reportedly come out of the vehicle yards short of the death trap.
Brigadier Sreedhar of Baramulla-based 19th Infantry Division, who was commander of a Brigade, with its headquarters in Uri, was the first seniormost officer of armed forces who was eliminated much like DIG Tanwar in an equally powerful landmine blast close to LoC in Uri sector in March 1995.
The second fatal casualty occurred on 13th July, 1999, when militants introduced suicide strikes against armed forces in Jammu & Kashmir with a fidayeen attack on BSF’s headquarters of Sector-11 at Madar near Bandipore in north-east of the Valley. Sector Commander, DIG S K Chakravarty and Joint Assistant Director (G) Mohan Raj, Sub Inspector Bhaskar were among four BSF officials in the unprecedented gunbattle. A special contingent of National Security Guards (NSG) commandoes was flown in for the operation from New Delhi in addition to senior BSF officials, Army’s Marine Commandoes (Marcos) and different units of Army and BSF that participated in the 70-hour-long encounter with militants.
The suicide attack on the BSF camp in Bandipore, in which three militants also got killed, happened in the thick of Kargil War. J&K has till date witnessed nearly 80 fidayeen attacks on different camps of Army, BSF, CRPF, JKP besides non-military installations likeTourist Reception Srinagar, Passport Office Srinagar, Press Information Bureau complex Srinagar, Income Tax complex Srinagar, Radio Kashmir Srinagar, Raghunath Mandir Jammu and Railway Station Jammu.
Making an inspection of Sector-7 area in Kupwara district just three days after his joining at Drugmulla, Brig B S Shergil became the third major target of militants when they blew up his vehicle in an IED blast on Zachaldara-Handwara Road in then militant-infested Rajwar belt in north Kashmir on 21st August, 2000. He was killed alongwith three other Army officials accompanying him. They included Commanding Officer of Rashtriya Rifles 21 Bn, Col Rajinder Chauhan, who was under transfer and was on the last tour of his area of operation.
Armed forces in J&K suffered the worst ever damage when as many as 8 Army officials, including Brig V K Govil of 16 Corps, got killed in a suicide strike by militants on EME camp, Bangti (Tanda), on Akhnoor-Tanda Road, in Jammu division on 22nd July 2003. Senior Army commanders, including then General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Northern Command, Lt Gen Hari Prasad, Commander of Nagrota-based 16 Corps, Lt Gen T P S Brar, two Major Generals D Khanna and T K Sapru, Brigadier Baldev Singh of 10 RT Brigade and two more officers of the rank of Colonel had sustained injuries in this strike as one of the militants hiding behind Sarkanda grass blew himself up close to his targets.
Jammu and Kashmir Police has suffered the first and the last fatal casualty in this category of senior officers when militants gunned down DIG Crime & Railways, Mohammad Amin Bhat, in point blank range at Barzulla in Srinagar on 2nd February, 2004. On leave because of Idd-ul-Azha, DIG Bhat was unarmed and in his civvies when he was killed like a lame duck. As he was coming out of a mosque after performing his prayers on the day of Idd, two unidentified militants fired upon him, killing him on the spot.
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Mirwaiz, colleagues meet Chidambaram in Delhi
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 16: Second round of a secret dialogue between Mirwaiz Umar Farooq-led faction of the separatist Hurriyat Conference with the Union Home Minister P Chidambaram has taken place in New Delhi on Saturday, days before the cleric-politician is scheduled to visit Pakistan. Highly placed sources, believed to be well informed of the new development, revealed to Early Times that Mirwaiz was accompanied by his Hurriyat confidante Bilal Gani Lone and former Chairman of the conglomerate, Prof Abdul Gani Bhat.
According to these sources, Mirwaiz, Lone and Bhat got together at Khan Market---also frequently visited by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his family---a little after mid-day and an official car without number plate drove them straight to the nearby Lodhi Estate where Home Minister Chidambaram held a secret meeting with the Kashmiri separatist leaders at a safe house. The meeting lasted for two hours, sources said but claimed to have no knowledge of what had transpired between the two sides.
As agreed in a contact between the two, Central and state security and intelligence agencies, who normally maintain watch on the Hurriyat leaders, were directed to clear out at 1100 hours. Accordingly, there was no visible security or intelligence cover, sources said.
Even as nobody from the Hurriyat responded to phone calls, sources close to Mirwaiz maintained that no such meeting had taken place between the Chairman and the Union Home Minister. “These are deliberate leaks being floated by officials in Omar Abdullah’s governments who do not seem to be sincere in their talk of restoration of the dialogue process with the Kashmiri leadership”, said a senior separatist leader wishing anonymity. He said that Mirwaiz Umar’s detractors in a rival Hurriyat camp had also shown a lot of enthusiasm in trumpeting about a meeting he had, according to a New Delhi report, held with Chidambaram before his departure for participation in the OIC meeting in New York last month.
Amid Chidambaram’s refrain of “quiet diplomacy”, former RAW chief A S Dullat and former Pakistani High Commissioner, Aziz Ahmed Khan, have reportedly held three rounds of talks in Bangkok. Khan was last month in Srinagar where he participated an Indo-Pakistan civil society conference and also held at least two meetings with Mirwaiz and Governor N N Vohra, separately. He was also joined in both meetings by a former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan.
After days of his hectic political activity in Doda and Kishtwar districts in Muslim-dominated parts of Jammu region, followed by a three-day visit to New Delhi, Mirwaiz today reached here back and joined the funeral of prominent journalist and editor of ‘Srinagar Times’ Sofi Ghulam Mohammad. He also led the Namaaz-e-Janaazah.
Sources close to Mirwaiz said that the Hurriyat Executive Council would meet here on Wednesday to discuss his forthcoming visit to Pakistan as also to constitute a team of senior separatist leaders who would be accompanying the Hurriyat chief.
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ET OBITUARY
GM Sofi: An icon and iconoclast
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 16: After reading him regularly for nearly three decades, it was in 2004 that I discovered in him as a good human being and neighbour when we shared a room for about a week at a hotel in London. Until then, I knew Sofi Ghulam Mohammad as an extremely ambitious journalist who had mastery in making the powers that be bow. Inspite of being impressed with his powerful editorials and earlier day scoops---blindness disease in Karnah and selling of Bengali women in Valley---I often thought that his without his brother Bashir Ahmed Bashir’s cartoons, ‘Srinagar Times’ would have been nothing different from Nand Lal Wattal’s ‘Khidmat’, Aziz Kashmiris’ ‘Roshni’ or his old colleague G R Irfani’s ‘Naya Sansar’. Then I learned how Sofi was not only born great but also how greatness does follow such people in all times.
On a couple of occasions, I felt nervous as the 80-year-old did for me (in my absence) what only your caring mothers and domestic helps do. I had little knowledge how great a neighbour he was for her at Buchhwara but, thousands of miles away from home, he looked like father of a broadcaster working at the BBC. Close to his check out, he took out a meticulously preserved container and told me that it had to be delivered at Bush House at any cost. Then I learned that it was a pack of sumptuous Kashmiri waazwaan Sofi had carried all the way from Srinagar. I knew its importance as I had the experience of such things being thrown away by even one’s family members due to time constraints.
Even as he could not visit Bush House and his neighbour could not come to the hotel due to a sprain, Sofi Sahab did not take rest until the gift from home reached the broadcaster.
My 31-year-long association with Sofi Ghulam Mohammad had begun in late 1970s when as a rebel student at the school I took strong objection to ST’s edit page assault on Maulvi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari for having walked out in protest at an official function. Ansari had left the auditorium at Women’s College when a group of the girl students presented a dance item before President of India and then Chief Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah. I penned a ripper on Sofi’s column “Iftikhar ka Ehtijaj” and went straight to get it published in Shameem Ahmed Shameem’s “Aayina”. I knew Sofi and Shameem were at draggers drawn.
Contrary to my high expectations, Shameem brought it home to me that the reaction needed to appear in ST alone. “If Sofi Sahab does not publish, come back to me”, Shameem advised.
Getting upstairs, I was certain that the cantankerous editor would not only tear my papers but would also thrash me to pulp. Captioned “Srinagar Times ek baday jurm kii parda poshi kar raha hai”, the two-part write up made Sofi read up to the end. “Excellent. Excellent. Keep it up young boy”, he exclaimed in appreciation and gave me a pat. I still apprehended it would follow with a slap and abuse. It really didn’t. Next morning, I was taken aback to find the piece without editing a punctuation in the ST. Part-2 appeared the day after but stirred a hornet’s nest as Sheikh’s aficionado Sadiq Ali wrote a bitter rejoinder. It was soon followed by a battery of ghost writers.
That Sofi was an indomitable journalist was proved when the gunmen claiming to be representatives of the Kashmiri people began targeting him, first with threats and later with guns and grenades. He had the distinction of being the first journalist to receive a bullet wrapped in a piece of paper. Azam Inquillabi’s note to the editor---perhaps days before Rubaiyya Sayeed kidnapping--- asked Sofi Sahab to choose between death and publishing the militants’ statements verbatim.
Sofi’s half-heartedly toeing the militants’ line failed him to get the recognition of a “freedom loving” scribe. As he began showing limits to his bending and taking the diktats blindly---and set up parallel office at his home---, he was subjected to at least four unsuccessful attempts on his life. The last one happened at his home office when the octogenarian scribe had a physical scuffle with the armed assailant. Pushed to the wall, Sofi developed interest in active politics, was nominated as Member of Legislative Council by then Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed but restricted himself to projecting only the matters of high public interest and importance.
While being a nominee of then ruling coalition, Sofi launched a bitter campaign against Mufti’s powerful ministerial colleagues, notably Ghulam Hassan Mir and Hakeem Mohammad Yasin.
Sofi Sahab revealed to me on more than one occasion that he had been reading my previous newspaper for two things: “Your incisive reports and Page 2, that tells me who among the Kashmiri Pandits has passed away in the last 24 hours”. Notwithstanding his 1990-days phrases like “mafroor Pandit”, “Mukhbir” et al, I had discovered a passion in Sofi Sahab for Kashmir’s composite culture and plural society.
“I feel as if our arms and legs have been amputated”, he told me once while bemoaning on the mass migration of Kashmiri Pandits. “It will be a great favour if you carry my brother’s obituary on page 2 of your newspaper”, he said on the day of journalist-historian Sofi Ghulam Mohiuddin’s demise three years ago and made it a point that the news of his death reached every member of the displaced Pandit community in Jammu, Udhampur, Delhi and other places.
It is definitely not for nothing that Kashmir’s who’s who from Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Geelani to Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah, from Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to a number of his ministerial colleagues today joined the ranks of Sofi Sahab’s Namaaz-e-Janazah on the Boulevard.
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Mirwaiz lieutenants again in the eye of a storm
Efforts underway to isolate Prof Gani, Bilal Lone, Abbas Ansari, Fazal Haq
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 15: Much like last year’s turbulence on controversial allotment of land to Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board, faces of moderate politics in the Kashmiri separatist camp are once again being isolated not only by Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s hardline faction of the Hurriyat Conference but also by many in Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s own conglomerate. Obviously encouraged by the space created by Omar Abdullah-led coalition government for Mr Geelani, pro-unification leaders like Shabir Ahmed Shah and Nayeem Ahmed Khan have begun efforts to neutralize the Hurriyat (M) foursome---Prof Abdul Gani Bhat, Bilal Gani Lone, Maulana Abbas Ansari and Fazal Haq Qureishi---amid speculations of Mirwaiz joining a dialogue process and “secret diplomacy” with New Delhi and Islamabad for working out a resolution of the Kashmir crisis.
With the mercury dipping fast, summer capital has suddenly become venue for hot political activity of the separatist camp. In the past three days, at least four conferences have been held here on the role of “resistance leaders”---a phrase coined by a section of media for the politicians struggling for Kashmir’s separation from the Indian sovereignty. Even as representatives of almost all the separatist outfits are being invited by the organizers, hardliners like Geelani and Dukhtaraan-e-Millat chief, Asiya Andrabi, besides President of High Court Bar Association, Mian Abdul Qayoom, are invariably the star speakers.
Asiya has launched fresh tirade against Mirwaiz, alleging that the young separatist leader was going to take the Pakistani leadership into confidence so as to get Islamabad’s approval to New Delhi’s plans on Kashmir. According to her, Mirwaiz had set off with an Indian agenda.
One more platform came handy today on occasion of the 4th day ceremony of Prof Ghulam Mohammad Sheikh who passed away last week. Speaking in the well-attended condolence meeting, Geelani announced that a major conference would be organized on the campus of University of Kashmir on occasion of Chehlum (40th day ceremony) of late Prof Sheikh. Laying emphasis on more public support to his current campaign against demilitarization, Geelani made it clear that the Kashmiris had just one goal---Azadi barai Islam---and, according to him, there was “absolutely no scope” for secularism in the “freedom movement”.
Strongly dismissing New Delhi’s latest offer of talks with the Kashmiri leadership---received enthusiastically by major mainstream parties as also a positive nod from Mirwaiz---Geelani asserted that implementation of the UN resolutions was the “one and the only one solution to the Kashmir dispute”. At all of his gatherings in the last few days, Geelani has repeatedly suggested that with his tacit approval of Home Minister P Chidambarm’s offer of bilateral dialogue, Mirwaiz had violated not only the Hurriyat’s birth day rider but also an agreement signed by leaders of the two factions in June 2008. According to him, Mirwaiz had accepted in black-and-white that his faction would not participate in any bilateral dialogue process with India or Pakistan.
In his keynote address at a seminar organized by his political outfit Muslim League, former Hizbullah commander Mushtaq-ul-Islam made a frontal attack on the Hurriyat (Mirwaiz) leaders----Prof Bhat, Bilal Lone, Maulana Ansari and Fazal Haq---with the allegation that their activities were harmful for the “freedom movement”. Dukhtaraan chief, Asiya Andrabi has expressed identical views in a couple of these conferences and asked for isolating the “traitors”. Architect of last year’s unification process of the Hurriyat factions, Shabir Shah today thundered at Muslim League seminar that it was “high time to identify and isolate the traitors”.
In his obvious attack on the Mirwaiz lieutenants, Shabir Shah did not name any “traitors” but asserted that there was “absolutely no scope of any quiet diplomacy or bilateral talks” in the Valley’s separatist camp. He claimed that New Delhi’s and Omar Abdullah-led coalition government’s latest refrain of dialogue with the Kashmiri leaders was “patently contrary to the Hurriyat constitution and last year’s agreement between two factions of the amalgamation”. Informed sources insist that some constituents of Mirwaiz-led Hurriyat were in full agreement with the views being publicly expressed by Mr Geelani and constituents of his alliance.
Even the separatists, who have maintained neutrality and have stayed away from joining either faction of the conglomerate that split in 2003, have begun to lend support to Geelani’s ideology. Significantly, Jamiat Ahle-Hadith chief Maulana Showkat---commonly known as Yasin Malik’s friend and Geelani’s detractor---today said at the two-day conference of his organization that there was no point in participating in secret diplomacy or bilateral talks. Using Geelani’s, Asiya’s and Shabir Shah’s phraseology verbatim, Maulana Showkat dismissed the UPA government’s offer of Delhi-Srinagar talks as a “completely futile exercise”.
Stressing on Pakistan’s participation and making it a tripartite process, Maulana Showkat asserted that the Kashmir problem’s solution lay in nothing but implementation of the UN resolutions. According to him, people of the state should be given right of self-determination, asking them whether they were for accession to Pakistan or India.
Mirwaiz has, meanwhile, attended a meeting with the Pakistani High Commissioner at New Delhi today, raising speculation of his visit to Islamabad in a few days. His faction of the Hurriyat is meeting here on Wednesday next to select the leaders of Mirwaiz-led delegation. Playing down frontal attacks from the radical camp, Mirwaiz has not so far defended his colleagues who chose to remain in oblivion during last year’s Amarnath turbulence.
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BJP kettle calling the Hurriyat pot black!
When Chancellors and Pro Chancellors fail, Vice Chancellors can be no different
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 14: Separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s visit to the Kashmir University (KU) campus, inspection of Iqbal Library and a fiery speech at a gathering of the students and officials has stirred a hornet’s nest in the BJP. MLA and President of the party, Ashok Khajuria did not waste a minute in demanding action against Vice Chancellor Prof Riyaz Punjabi. He has publicly complained that Chief Minister and Pro Chancellor Omar Abdullah had allowed KU to become ‘a den of anti-Indian propaganda’ by permitting radical separatists like Geelani to address students and officials.
Fact of the matter is that almost all Chancellors (Governors) and Pro Chancellors (Chief Ministers) have failed to discharge their responsibility of protecting the sanctity of the institutions of learning in the strife-torn Jammu & Kashmir in the last two decades. Understandably, the Vice Chancellors of KU and Jammu University (JU) have either played the politics of appeasement or completely surrendered before the actors whose politics has been patently parochial. Communal and regional divide between two faiths and provinces has been the corner stone of this politics that has been flourishing in the name of democracy and functional autonomy of the universities.
KU is better placed in the sense that its students do not have a recognized union since 1980s and its teachers have not directly practiced party politics on the campus. Services of then lecturer of nuclear physics, Dr Ayub Thakur were terminated after he escorted some leaders of the Iranian revolution in the Valley, organized a rally of students and staff on the campus 25 years ago. In 1990-92, Prof Abdul Ahad Wani of the Department of Law and Mohammad Shafi Khan of the Department of Persian associated themselves with JKLF and Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen respectively. While as Wani was gunned down, allegedly by guerrillas of a rival outfit, Khan has been continuously in jail.
Dukhtaraan-e-Millat chief Asiya Andrabi’s brother, Dr Anaytullah Andrabi, gave up his job at KU and settled in London over a decade ago. Students and members of faculty have been in the forefront of anti-India and pro-Azadi feelings---and occasionally demonstrations---but they have not formally joined parties the way quite a number of their counterparts in JU have done in the winter capital. Former VC Prof Jalees Tareen had observed at an official function that KU had the distinction of being the country’s one-odd university which had not slogans of political parties painted on its boundary walls.
Jalees paradoxically headed to an unceremonious exit as he asserted to enforce discipline by disturbing a powerful lobby of academics and students “indulging in objectionable political practice”.
Things phenomenally deteriorated during the tenures of his successors to the extent that one of the Professors of the Department of Law confronted former Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah, denigrated him as “an advocate of Indian forces” and asked him to “shut up and sit down” on occasion of the inauguration of KU’s Convocation Hall three years ago. This all happened not only in presence of the host and VC, Prof Abdul Wahid Qureishi, but also the chief guest and Chancellor, Governor S K Sinha.
Authorities at a lower level maintain that no action can be taken against the “pro-Azadi” faculty and students until one was initiated against the political practitioners in JU. It has been widely observed and pointed out in the last three days that Mr Khajuria has expressed his indignation over Mr Geelani’s Hazratbal visit and sought “restoration of KU’s sanctity” in just three months of the RSS conclave at JU. Nobody appears to be listening to RSS and BJP leaders’ argument that RSS had hired JU’s Zorawar Singh Auditorium against “cash payment” and that there was nothing “anti-national” at the gathering.
The bigger fact remains that a large number of political practitioners, including those of JU’s different faculties, participated in the congregation that was addressed by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, BJP President, Rajnath Singh, and many others from Sangh Parivar, whose politics and beliefs in terms of region and religion have been patently parochial in J&K.
State’s largest political parties, including National Conference, PDP and Congress, have stayed away and creditably made little attempts to tamper with the sanctity of universities in J&K. With the exception of Congress party’s NSUI, they have not even set up student wings at the institutions of learning. On the other hand, Prof Nirmal Singh of the Department of History and Naresh Padha have established and expanded BJP’s student wing, Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) at JU over two decades ago. Prof Virender Gupta (Retd) of the Departments of Physics outsmarted even senior leaders of Prof Bhim Singh’s National Panthers Party while operating the politics of Jammu’s separate statehood from this platform for several years.
Emboldened by encouragement and appeasement from successive governments, Prof Nirmal Singh subsequently rose to become BJP’s state President and participated in four Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, including those of the current year. Having never been on leave, Prof Singh has been continuously working as a regular teacher with JU. He has been, of late, succeeded as state President of BJP by Mr Kahjuria but has been continuously and proudly working for the party.
Prof Singh found another BJP ideologue in Prof Hari Om of the Department of History who worked more for a party than his university until he made a volte face last year and shifted his loyalties to Congress. He is continuing as head of his department’s Maharaja Gulab Singh Chair in JU. After her not-so-active association with the party, Prof Nirmal Gupta of the Department of Economics joined BJP during Amarnath land row in 2008, months before she reached superannuation at JU. In this war of black kettles and pots, Prof Singh and Prof Hari Om have been taking objection to three of the KU professors enjoying the freedom of making India bashing at international conferences, including few organized by United Nations.
Expecting a government, that has failed to appoint a VC for Islamic University of Science & Technology, Awantipore, in the last 10 months and allowed a PDP promotee to continue in office for 15 months after expiry of his term, may be naïveté. It was only then Chief Minister Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah who used his powers as Pro Chancellor and appointed two commissions---one headed by former IGP J&K, L D Thakur, and another by eminent diplomat and one-time VC of Aligarh Muslim University, Badaruddin Tayyabji---respectively to inquire into a rift between Prof Abdul Ahad Wani and Prof Saifuddin Soz that had affected the academic atmosphere at KU and to propose plans for the university’s academic development.
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EARLY TIMES IMPACT
Speaker asks CS to close unauthorized kilns in Budgam
‘Nexus between officials and brick kiln owners not acceptable in a civilized society’
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
JAMMU, Nov 12: Taking suo moto cognizance of Early Times campaign against ecological vandalism in Kashmir valley, Speaker of Legislative Assembly, Mohammad Akbar Lone, has asked Chief Secretary, S S Kapur, to close down all unauthorized brick kilns in Budgam district. He has made it clear on the head of the administration and state bureaucracy that a “nexus between the departments and the brick kiln owners” was not acceptable in a civilized society.
In an environmental series in its issues dated October 8th, 9th and 13th, Early Times had reported in detail how as many as 155 brick kilns had been set up in Budgam district in brazen violation of over a dozen laws and the same were operating without license and necessary Consent to Establish (CTE) and Consent to Operate (CTO) from J&K State Pollution Control Board (PCB).
Highly placed sources in the state government said that Chief Secretary S S Kapur has received Speaker’s DO NO: LA/J/Spk/06/09 dated 10-11-2009, inviting his attention to wanton ecological vandalism in Budgam district and asking him to close down all unauthorized brick kilns. Speaker is understood to have written to the CS that during a recent tour in Budgam district, he had learned from complaining delegations and observed personally that a large number of brick kilns had been set up “in utter violation of the prescribed rules and regulations in connivance with the concerned departments, thereby causing a lot of inconvenience to the people there”.
“Such a tendency needs to be curbed with a heavy hand to save the state from the cruel hands of the said mafia. This issue, it may be pointed here, was also carried by a leading newspaper, namely EARLY TIMES repeatedly to draw the attention of the authorities at the helm (copies of the relevant press clippings are enclosed for ease of reference) but unfortunately such a serious issue has not been taken care of till date”, Speaker has written to Mr Kapur.
“As a matter of fact, the life of the adjacent people has become miserable by way of emitting the health hazardous intoxicants in the shape of harmful gases by these kilns. Moreover the pollution caused by these brick kilns besides making the life hell has to a large extent damaged the paddy fields and orchards in the area. If this menace continues, there may not be any land available with our future generations for agricultural purposes’, Speaker has recorded in his letter and pointed out Government was spending huge amounts out of state exchequer on functioning of the departments responsible for environmental protection and enforcement of other laws being violated.
“The concern shown by the people of these villages is genuine and justified and needs your kind intervention to ensure a proper and timely action so that the jinx of destruction and disturbance of the natural conservation of environment in these villages could be restricted at the earliest”, Speaker has written and asked Chief Secretary to constitute a committee, comprising officers of good reputation and integrity, “to conduct a thorough probe and find out reasons for setting up of these unauthorized and illegal brick kilns in this area and submit a report to this effect to you within a stipulated period of one month, enabling the state government to take further necessary steps to check this menace forthwith so that the local people would take a sigh of relief from the cruel jaws of enemies of the nature”. Mr Kapur has been asked to furnish a report of the said committee to the Speaker.
In the environmental series, that has for the first time influenced Speaker of Legislative Assembly to make a wake-up call on the Chief Secretary, this correspond had reported in detail how officials of different government departments---notably PCB, Police, Revenue, Environment & Remote Sensing, Power Development Department, Industries, Geology & Mining, Irrigation, PHE and Commercial Taxes---had conveniently shut their eyes to establishment and operation of as many as 155 unauthorized and completely illegal brick kilns in Budgam. It had been reported, on the public complaints and source inputs, that a number of officers directly responsible for violation of 12 particular laws had been collecting bribes, in cash and kind, from the operators of the unauthorized brick kilns and leaving their business intact.
It had also been reported in detail how these kilns had been emitting carcinogenic and other gases, dangerously harmful to human and animal life, agriculture and horticulture, while using the static iron chimneys banned by Supreme Court of India over four years go and also substandard fuel including rubber tyres.
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Geelani gatecrashes into KU, delivers lecture on Azadi
Takes oath from students, calls NC etc ‘murderers of Kashmiris’
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 11: For the first time in his 50-year-long political career, separatist hardliner, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, today forced his entry into the campuses of University of Kashmir, described Jammu & Kashmir as a “disputed territory”, delivered a lecture on Azadi, took an oath of working for the state’s ‘freedom’ from India from a congregation of students and called Pro Vice Chancellor Omar Abdullah and his party, National Conference, as the “murderers of the Kashmiris”.
Going strictly according to his much publicized programme of addressing a congregation of the students and employees of the University of Kashmir, Hurriyat (G) Chairman and senior Jamaat-e-Islami ideologue, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, drove straight to the Hazratbal campus and forced his entry through a nominal Police barrier. Attracting a thick number of students, Geelani gate-crashed into the campus and addressed a multitude of students in front of Iqbal Library. Reports said that hundreds of students of different post-graduate courses and members of the University staff formed Geelani’s audience.
In his fiery speech, just 200 yards from Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s mausoleum, Geelani called Chief Minister and KU Pro Chancellor Omar Abdullah’s National Conference (NC), Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s PDP, Congress and other pro-India political parties as the “murderers of the Kashmiris” and held them responsible for strengthening “Indian occupation” on Jammu & Kashmir. Obviously in a quick reaction to the rival Hurriyat leader Prof Abdul Gani Bhat’s suggestion of all mainstream and separatist organizations working out a joint formula for resolution of the Kashmir crisis, Geelani asserted that there was “absolutely no meeting ground” between the two.
“Pro-India parties including National Conference, PDP and Congress have their hands soaked with the blood of innocent Kashmiris. Hurriyat is representing the poor freedom-loving people. How can both meet, share a platform and work on a joint formula?”, Geelani asked his enthusiastic audiences. He asserted that “one Lakh Kashmiris” had not laid down their lives for autonomy, self-rule or former Pakistani President Pervaiz Musharraf’s 4-point formula. According to him, a lasting and formidable solution lay in nothing other than implementation of the 60-year-old UN resolution, asking people of undivided state of Jmmu & Kashmir whether the were in favour of accession to India or Pakistan.
Geelani claimed that New Delhi’s current suggestions of dialogue with the Kashmiris were the result of world pressure on India. “This is all, in fact, a ploy to hoodwink the world, particularly the United Nations”, Geelani said and asserted that there was neither sincerity nor seriousness in Government of India’s refrain of holding a dialogue with the Kashmiris. According to him, the first test of India’s sincerity would be declaring entire Jammu & Kashmir as a “disputed territory” and withdrawing troops from J&K.
Amid shouting of pro-freedom slogans, Geelani took an oath from the multitude of students and University employees to work for “freedom from India” and asked them to form a union that, according to his desire, would work for Islam and Azadi. He got an affirmation from his audience.
Justifying Hurriyat’s frequent calls for shutdown, Geelani said that a hartal was the “last weapon in our hands, to register our protest against India’s occupation and human rights abuse of her armed forces”. He said that militants were doing their own job with their arms while as Hurriyat was engaged in a peaceful struggle for freedom.
Geelani, nevertheless, complained that the Kashmiris were poor in their resolution as, only last year, hundreds of thousands of them had demanded freedom from India on the streets but in quick succession same numbers of the people had participated in the Assembly elections conducted by Election Commission of India. “Be resolute and consistent in your demand of Azadi”, Geelani advised the Kashmiris.
On his departure, Geelani was taken into custody by Police near Sheikh Abdullah’s mausoleum and whisked away to Humhama Police Station. Valley has witnessed this drill, which invariably follows with Geelani’s release, over a dozen times since he was let off from a formal imprisonment few months back.
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Geelani, Mirwaiz trash Omar’s monologue on dialogue
Hurriyat dares CM to pass 6-point formula in J&K Assembly
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 10: Both factions of Hurriyat Conference have pooh-poohed Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s PDP-brand refrain on New Delhi’s dialogue with the separatist leadership even as Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has dared him to pass his 6-point formula in J&K Legislative Assembly if head of the coalition government was really sincere in his recently made public utterances.
Hardline Hurriyat chief, Geelani has characteristically trashed union Home Minister P Chidambarm and J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s newfound refrain on “quiet diplomacy” and asserted that there was, as usual, neither sincerity nor seriousness in the ruling coalition’s statements. “It’s all an exercise in futility. Bilateral talks on Kashmir problem have invariably ended up in failure. Real solution lies in tripartite talks between India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris or implementation of the UN resolutions”, Geelani told local news agency, Kashmir News Service.
Geelani said that his faction of the Hurriyat Conference would respond positively and engage itself in a dialogue process if Government of India declared Kashmir as a disputed territory and sounded sincere in holding talks with the Kashmiri leadership. He asserted that Hurriyat would never participate in the talks which ran contrary to its constitution. “They are, in fact, misleading the world with such hollow utterances”, Geelani is reported to have said in reaction to the coalition leadership’s recent statements on “quiet diplomacy” and willingness to talk to all cross-sections of public opinion, including the separatist leadership.
Refusing to accept it as the Government’s obligation, Geelani said that an international passport had been issued to him first time after 1981 but it was all meaningless as, according to him, there was continuous Police siege around his house in Hyderpora and he was not being allowed to budge an inch outside the premises. He has, of late, approached J&K High Court, seeking “withdrawal of the Police siege”. A commissioner appointed by the court today made an inspection but did not found any Police presence. Geelani’s spokesman Ayaz Akbar claimed that Police had lifted the siege minutes before the commissioner’s arrival.
In his immediate reaction to the Chief Minister’s statement made at his news conference in Jammu on Monday, Mirwaiz too claimed that there was little sincerity and seriousness in the coalition leaders’ refrain of holding talks with the Kashmiri leadership. “If National Conference and PDP are really serious in their public utterances, which keep changing with every passing moment, they better pass Hurriyat’s 6-point formula in their Assembly”, Chairman of so-called moderate faction of the Hurriyat, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said. He, significantly, did not sound to be critical of “quiet diplomacy” and said that Hurriyat was not afraid of “any talks whether held publicly or secretly”.
Informed sources, meanwhile, revealed to Early Times that Mirwaiz had conveyed his “displeasure” to the UPA leadership in New Delhi over “derailing the dialogue process well before it has started”. He is understood to have taken umbrage over reports that claimed the Hurriyat chief had met Home Minister Chidambaram last month before his departure for London.
Reports from south Kashmir said that another prominent separatist leader, Shabir Shah, has asked NC and PDP leaders to step down and join the ranks of the separatist leadership if they were sincere in holding talks with “pro-freedom leaders”.
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Mufti’s khul ja SIM SIM and Geelani’s ghar kab jaoge?
Why both slogans are failing to generate Ragda-III in Kashmir
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 8: Apparently taking advantage of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s limited access to understanding of ground realities in Valley and the level of confidence he has exuded over the last 10 months of his maiden regime, mainstream as well as the separatist opposition have been floating assortments of issues and non-issues in Jammu & Kashmir. Creation of a new theatre of regional and communal divide has been, however, elusive for both after the resolution of Amarnath Shrine Board land allotment crisis last year.
Alleged rape-cum-murder of two young women in Shopian shook the Valley for a couple of months in the middle of current year but revelation of a lady doctor’s unethical act of fudging the vaginal smears with a nefarious design took the sting out from the outrage in a few weeks. The outcry, locally known as Ragda-II, faded out further after a team of forensic experts from AIIMS and CFSL exhumed the bodies in presence of a local doctor, nominated by Majlis-e-Mushawarat Shopian, and, according to reports not refuted by CBI, found biological evidence of the unmarried girl’s virginity.
Characters of a love-hate relationship, PDP patriarch Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Hurriyat (G) supremo Syed Ali Shah Geelani, have been remarkably in a competition to steel the show with identical issues. Interestingly, none other than PDP’s ideologue and former Chief Minister, Muzaffar Hussain Baig, has solved the mystery of this uniformity by revealing in a television programme last week that his party was doing the service of “occupying the space Hurriyat would have captured”.
Geelani had the advantage of being in detention when Mufti and his party were humbled by hundreds of thousands of the Kashmiris by their proscribed participation in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections. In September 2008, PDP had taken the lead over Hurriyat by claiming that nobody in the Valley would participate in the elections as the Kashmiris, according to it, had not been taken on board by Governor N N Vohra’s establishment while resolving the land crisis and inking a deal with “representatives of just one community and region”.
A host of speculations with regard to security of Durbar Move staff failed to prevent the Kashmiri employees from proceeding to the winter capital. Not one untoward incident happened for six months of the seat of power being in Jammu.
Ever since the two elections, that swapped the places of National Conference (NC) and PDP, Mufti’s party appears to be confused whether to emerge as NC’s secular alternative or to exist and expand as Hurriyat’s Muslim-centric, Valley-centric mainstream parallel. It has, in the process, failed in both. Its silver lining, admittedly, lies in the fact that the NC’s cadres are as demoralized and disempowered as in previous six years, the government by many indications appears to be that of any party other than the NC and Congress and the anti-incumbency factor is swelling, though not phenomenally in the first year of the coalition regime.
Nobody in the ruling coalition appears to be sensitive to things like most of the government jobs being grabbed by people through corrupt practices and the writ of mainstream as well as the secessionist opposition running far larger than Omar Abdullah’s government and party---from matters of transfers and appointments to government contracts and supply orders.
Chief Minister, and consequently all Ministers of his Council, have been playing the politics of apology and defence as most of their policies and decisions seem to be influenced either by men of slapdash knowledge about Kashmir’s politics or by dangerously subjective reports and editorial comments in newspapers. In his futile attempts of outwitting arch rival PDP, Omar Abdullah has spent more time in calling for dialogue with the largely marginalized separatist leadership than interacting with the ordinary man in Valley and Jammu, who has given him the mandate and responsibility of solving his mundane problems.
From continued recession in Pakistan’s terror market---that is meteorically increasing with every singe blast in Punjab and NWFP and military action in FATA and PATA---to the aftermath of J&K elections, Omar has all indicators of the situation in his favour. He seems to be more comfortable with his Big Brother in Delhi than Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mufti Sayeed and Farooq Abdullah. Why should he be more loyal than the king that once was?
Even a lay man on the street in Srinagar knows that Kashmir’s political resolution can come only in a meaningful dialogue process that ideally means between BJP-led rightist leadership in Delhi and a strong military leadership in Islamabad. Delhi’s and Islamabad’s casual labourers in Srinagar and Jammu do have the role of playing just background music to any settlement worked out by the two countries.
It does not need four eyes to see that PDP is failing even in making a big issue of the ban on prepaid mobile services that has directly affected over three million people in the state. More subscribers have perhaps realized that Home Minister Chidambaram’s decision has been seriously influenced by security concerns New Delhi would hardly compromise. They seem to be more concerned over poor connectivity and speech quality in J&K than an end to prepaid services.
On the other hand, Geelani has successfully hijacked Mufti’s slogan of demilitarization and his call for district-wise shutdown has evoked some response but, for the time being and months of near future, a major turbulence in the Valley is nowhere in sight.
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Geelani spits on Farooq’s offer of dialogue
‘Sheikh Abdullah and NC are traitors who sold off Kashmir to India’
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 7: Treating the National Conference patriarch and Union Minister of New & Renewable Energy Dr Farooq Abdullah’s advice of accepting New Delhi’s offer of resolving the Kashmir crisis through a negotiation process, separatist hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani today asserted that the “Kashmiri peoples’ struggle for freedom from India” would continue in absence of any a “meaningful dialogue process”. He called Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, his progeny and political party “traitors responsible for selling off Kashmir to India” and claimed that men like Farooq Abdullah had no business to send him offers and advices.
Addressing a Muslim League sponsored seminar in memory of “martyrs of Jammu” (men of Muslim community killed in communal riots of 1947), Chairman of the hardline faction of Hurriyat Conference and former Jamaat-e-Islami ideologue, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, lashed out at Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, his progeny and National Conference (NC) and held them responsible for having sold off Kashmir to India for power. Obviously responding to Dr Abdullah’s offer of joining a dialogue process with the Centre, that had come at the union cabinet Minister’s news conference last evening, Geelani asserted that “traitors like Farooq Abdullah” had no business to send him advices and offers of a dialogue on the Kashmir dispute.
Geelani said that Sheikh Abdullah, his party and progeny had stabbed the Kashmiris in their back by “selling off Kashmir to India for power”. “We have no ambitions for power. Ours is the struggle for freedom. It will continue till we achieve our goal”, Geelani said and sweared that he would never commit treason with the people of Kashmir and “thousands of martyrs who have contributed their blood to the freedom struggle”. He said that Farooq Abdullah and others of his clan were the messengers of secular politics and added that there was no room for “la deen siasat” (secularism) in the “Kashmiris’ freedom struggle”.
Geelani asserted that his fresh campaign for total demilitarization in Jammu & Kashmir was phase one of a greater struggle. He said that he would not take rest until the last Indian soldier was withdrawn from Jammu & Kashmir. “Those advising me for mercy to the Kshmiris have brought in Army and strengthened the Indian occupation on Kashmir. How do they have temerity to advise us on peace and dialogue?” Geelani asked with an obvious reference to Dr Abdullah.
Commenting on Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s recent offer of dialogue, made in Srinagar last fortnight, Geelani said that Government of India had never initiated a “sincere and meaningful” dialogue process with the Kashmiris. “It is all bound to be an exercise in futility if held like a host of dialogue processes witnessed in the past”, Geelani added. He cautioned pro-dialogue Kashmiri separatist leaders to realize that their mistake (of holding talks with the Centre without J&K being declared as disputed and without associating Pakistan with the process) would have the potential of making the Kashmiris cry for centuries.
Geelani said that if Government of India was really sincere in resolving the Kashmir dispute by way of a dialogue process, it should immediately involve Pakistan and make it a tripartite initiative, begin withdrawal of its troops from J&K and release all political detainees.
The seminar was addressed on identical lines by President of High Court Bar Association, Mian Abdul Qayoom, Dukhtaraan-e-Millat supreme Asiya Andrabi and other separatist leaders and ideologues.
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Tuesday, November 3, 2009
For daily EARLY TIMES (www.earlytimes.in) of November 5, 2009
Ambika’s DD humbles Farooq with vengeance
Defeated candidates among backdoor allotees of DD Kashir programmes
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
SRINAGAR, Nov 4: Even as Doordarshan is continuously refusing to post the list of the allotee producers and their credentials on its website, current process of the commissioning of programmes for DD Kashir is assuming proportions of a major scandal in Prasar Bharti Broadcasting Corporation of India. With the skeletons tumbling out of DD’s cupboards, a number of political activists and defeated candidates of the Assembly elections in Jammu & Kashmir have been found among the beneficiary ‘producers’ in brazen violation of DD’s own policies and guidelines.
Union Minister for New & Renewable Energy, Dr Farooq Abdullah, has been publicly humiliated by DD by allotting programmes to some defeated candidates, including one who had contested the Assembly elections of December 2008 against none other than the former J&K Chief Minister. Just a fortnight ago, Dr Abdullah had complained in his speech to his Cabinet colleague and Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting, Ambika Soni, that her DD had become a “den of corruption” as the authorities had been allotting most of the programmes either to the relatives and front producers of DD’s own employees or to a number of political activists at the cost of the professional producers.
In a sordid act of eroding the faith of millions of people in J&K in the Indian democratic institutions, ‘Mandi House’ in New Delhi has passed off insignificant mainstream political activists as ‘private producers and filmmakers’ in the current process of allotment. As lately as on October 13th, Dr Abdullah had publicly lamented at All India Editors Conference at SKICC, in presence of Minister incharge Information & Broadcasting, Ambika Soni and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah that Doordarshan had become a “den of corruption”. He had lamented before Ambika that many of DD’s employees as also a number of political activists had been conveniently masquerading as ‘private producers’.
“Eminent filmmaker Subhash Ghai is now looking for some different job”, Farooq had asserted with perceptible concern for credibility of the Government of India’s institutions in Jammu & Kashmir. Rather than feeling ashamed out of Dr Abdullah’s snub, DD officials in New Delhi began sending letters of approval, asking selected producers to submit complete scripts for different numbers of episodes and programmes allotted to them. Astonishingly, the first very group of the beneficiaries included Rafiuddin Ahmed who had contested recent Assembly elections against none other than Farooq Abdullah in Sonwar constituency.
Out of 26,852 votes polled in the segment, Rafiuddin Ahmed secured a paltry 530 and was among 25 contestants defeated by Dr Abdullah. In days of Dr Abdullah’s painful expression, Rafiuddin Ahmed has been allotted a drama serial by DD Kashir. While in his allotment, DD has only humiliated a union Cabinet Minister and dispensed with a tradition and policy---of not allotting programmes to political activists--- in the case of Rafiuddin Ahmed’s father, Shabir Hyder, DD has violated a hard and fast guideline.
Guideline (v) of GENERAL (N) of Directorate General of Doordarshan, which controls the process of commissioning of DD Kashir programmes says: “Normally more than one proposal from members of the same family, Production House/ Producer will not be considered, keeping in view principals of equity and natural justice”.
Interestingly, DD’s own inquiries in the wake of allegations of corruption in the previous process of commissioning for DD Kashir had held Mr Shabir Hyder responsible for grabbing 266 episodes instead of 104 he was entitled to under rules and guidelines that time. It was because of three particular producers of category ‘A’ that DD established the case of unfair means, revoked all 36 of the letters of approval issued and fought a pitched battle in courts of law against the producers. Rather than blacklisting them or putting them in a category of dubious persons, DD Kashir has now rewarded not only all the three but also several members of their families by allotting them 6 to 13 programmes each.
While as Mr Rafiuddin could not be reached for his comments, Mr Shabir Hyder, himself a senior and prominent producer, claimed to Early Times that he and his son were living separately in two families. This was not, however, corroborated by his neighbours in Shivpora locality in Srinagar. He asserted that his son was himself a producer and contesting of Assembly elections by him was “not a crime”.
An anganwari worker in Budgam district, Parveena Akhtar, also happens to be among the beneficiaries of DD’s fraudulent process of commissioning. While working with Social Welfare Department of J&K Government, Parveena was a recognized political party’s candidate in Khansahab Assembly segment. Getting 446 votes out of 54,030 polled in Khansahab, she was among 10 contestants defeated by PDF’s Hakeem Mohammad Yasin. In the current process of commissioning, DD Kashir has allotted her a number of programmes and recognized her as a private producer.
While as Director DDK Srinagar, Rafeeq Masoodi, said that he was not directly or indirectly associated with the process, he said that he would discuss the irregularities pointed out by media with his seniors in New Delhi. Director General DD, Ms Aruna Sharma, and Senior Director of Programmes, Ms Ananya Banerjee, did not respond to phone calls.
Meanwhile, a large number of television producers in Srinagar as well as in Jammu have decided to approach Chief Information Commissioner, Mr Wajahat Habibullah, with the belief that with his intervention DD would post the list of allotee producers, alongwith their credentials and photographs, on its website. “Letters of approval have been issued to more than 200 producers. Only 30 of them have been identified so far. Nobody knows who are others”, senior producer Shehzad Rasool said and insisted that there should be complete transparency, equitable treatment and natural justice in the entire process.
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