Modi govt ensured equitable development of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh: Union Minister Jitendra Singh

Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Saturday said the Narendra Modi government has ensured equitable development of both the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Rejecting the claims of regional discrimination by the opposition, he asked people alleging this to shed the baggage of past and liberate themselves from the cynicism that has plagued their minds for seven decades.

Challenging the opposition to prove the alleged discrimination against Jammu, Singh said there is absolutely no evidence of it, particularly during the last one year following the historic Constitutional changes of August 5 and 6, 2019.

He said such allegations and propaganda are being manufactured either by certain vested interests who had over the years thrived on receiving benefits from the back door or by certain cynic minds which draw sadist pleasure in raising the bogey of discrimination even when they can not prove it.

Speaking to the media here, Singh said, the Modi government has ensured equitable development of both the divisions of the union territory, but the matter of fact is that on account of circumstances prevailing in the Valley, during the last one year the development activities have progressed at a much faster pace in Jammu as compared to Kashmir.

Substantiating his point, he said that the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) has become functional in Jammu while there was no IIM in Kashmir and so also was the case with Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) which has been established in Jammu but not in Kashmir.

Similarly, the minister said that the work on AIIMS has started in Jammu while in Kashmir even the land acquisition is yet to be completed.

The construction work on the Ring Road project, the widening of National Highway from Pathankot to Jammu to make it six-lane from four-lane as well as the acquisition of land for the landmark Katra-Delhi Expressway road corridor has started in the Jammu region, said Singh, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office.

He is also the Lok Sabha member from Jammu and Kashmir’s Udhampur constituency.

Taking a dig at the "inherently habitual critics", Singh said, some of them are so obsessed by the thought of discrimination against Jammu that they assume discrimination in everything, and so much so that tomorrow they may even go to the extent of complaining why Kashmir got more number of corona positive cases and why Jammu, according to them, suffered discrimination by getting a lesser number of corona positive cases.

Out of seven centrally funded medical colleges, he said that Jammu received four and Kashmir only three.

As for recruitment to government jobs is concerned, Singh said that hereafter the selection will be made purely on the basis of written test, without an interview.

Those who are raising hue and cry are the ones who had, over the years, learnt to secure government jobs through dubious means or through middlemen, he alleged.

Singh said as we complete one year since the historic 5th of August 2019, let us shed the baggage of past and liberate our mindset from the cynicism that had plagued our minds for seven decades.