Beerwah July 17: Patron of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the former Chief Minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed on Sunday said the present dispensation in the state had “proved a stumbling block to any progress in dialogue.”
 “The disastrous performance of the coalition led by National Conference has widened the gulf between people of the state and rest of the country and immediate steps are needed to rebuild some trust and confidence,” Mufti said while addressing a gathering here in central Kashmir.
  Mufti said the refusal of state government to allow democratic space to leaders and parties holding a different view on the Kashmir issue had created a crisis of confidence among them. “As a result the dialogue process that had started in 2004 between the two sides at the highest level had broken down and nothing beyond paying lip service is being done to pick up the threads again,” he said.
 “It is futile to expect revival of internal dialogue while hundreds of people are put in jails and thousands of youth are being persecuted through false cases. Leaders who were released as a cosmetic measure to mislead the public are routinely put under house arrest and their movements severely restricted,” he added.
 This attitude, Mufti said, was counterproductive and could breed only alienation and the government needed to allow a free play of ideas and argument as that was the essence of our democratic set up.
 “Political process and human rights are not the only casualties of present government’s inefficiency and incompetence. On the development front its policies have resulted in complete reversal of the process of reconstruction that had started in 2002,” he alleged. 
 Major projects like the ERA and Prime Minister’s economic package that had started making a big impact on the infrastructure were almost shelved as a result of massive corruption and lack of political direction at the top.
 He said one of the finest governance machineries in the country, as we have in J&K, had been paralyzed through systematic promotion of the “corrupt and inefficient both at political and administrative levels. As a result the growth of the state had almost stopped and individuals were thriving at the state expense.”
 Addressing the meeting senior party leader and former deputy chief minister  Muzaffar Hussain Baig said the state government was virtually run by the vested  interest which was deeply entrenched at the highest level of administration.
 “Senior officers were made accountable to extra constitutional elements who are  ruling the roost without having any elected status, social standing or facing  any scrutiny” he said and alleged that the chief minister seemed to have outsourced governance to dubious characters.
 He said most ministers were running their departments as personal estates through fixers and middlemen without any central authority providing leadership to the government and administration.
 Baig said the previous government had under the leadership of Mufti Muhammad Sayeed evolved a development strategy that had ensured better utilization of resources which benefited maximum people.

Lastupdate on : Sun, 17 Jul 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:00:00 IST