: Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP) senior leader and former legislator Rafi Ahmad Mir on Tuesday said the governance in J&K has come to a “grinding halt” mainly because of “sharp groupism” in bureaucracy which seems to be busy in proving loyalties towards their respective centres of influence.
“The J&K is witnessing a kind of uncertainty and an unwanted decay in its governance apparatus mainly because of the lobbyism of its senior civil service officers and the same is going unnoticed in the din of COVID pandemic in Jammu and Kashmir,” Mir said in a statement issued here.
He said that the some officers who show their inclination towards Raj Bhavan are unfortunately at loggerheads with their bureaucratic colleagues who toe the line of highest office in civil secretariat resulting into a growing gulf between people and the dispensation at the helms of affairs.
“First the implementation of J&K Reorganization Act 2019 in Jammu and Kashmir was carried out on divisive lines by certain vested interest players who want Kashmir to remain distant from developmental activities. Now there are some status quoist senior officers who have rendered execution of critical public welfare projects and schemes badly affected,” Mir said.
The JKAP leader observed that the management of COVID pandemic across Kashmir have been handed over to some officers who are completely inaccessible to people not to talk of their response on developmental activities which have come to a complete standstill for obvious reasons. “This is because these officers think they are unaccountable because of their close proximity with the power corridors,” he added.
Mir observed that all such truant and unscrupulous officers, who have exacerbated the deadlock in developmental activities in J&K with the patronage of their respective benefactors, be brought to task and the union home minister should ensure to cease this deep polarization among officers which is eating into vitals of the edifice of governance.
The JKAP leader said that many important projects have been stuck due to the intransigence of some officers and the J&K which is in dire need of infrastructural development like roads, drains, water and electricity supply are craving for attention despite massive fund infusion from the central government.
Mir also censured the J&K government for “side-lining” the officers of a particular region on the basis of their region and religion. “The J&K government was supposed to follow egalitarian ideology of welfare for the common man and its policies were not supposed to bound by regional, religious and caste-based equations,” he added.
The JKAP leader said that his party is determined to fight the nefarious designs of some vested interest groups who are hell bent to inflict an irreversible harm on the constitutional ethos of the federalism.
Mir said that there is a general feeling that the L-G’s administration in J&K, with its “apathetic bureaucratic raj”, has failed to address the issues of the people. “The governance in Kashmir on the ground is totally invisible and there is absolutely no accountability in the absence of the people’s representatives. There is wide gulf between the administration and the people,” Mir observed, adding that the state bureaucracy continues to be forgetting their constitutional and professional obligations.
“In this scenario, the people of the state are facing problems from all corners as there is also a stagnation happening on the front of livelihood and addressing of everyday issues which have emerged due to the COVID pandemic,” he remarked.
Mir said the officers from Kashmir regions have either been assigned to insignificant postings or have been dumped completely. “Now one needs a magnifying glass to see if at all a Kashmiri officer is at the helms anywhere on some sensitive places of postings. This trend is dangerous and needs to be reversed in the interest of pluralistic and secular spirit of our constitution.”