Taking a dig at his own PDP-BJP government, the legislator from Kupwara Bashir Ahmad Dar on Wednesday said that legislators were “facing a critical situation” in their areas “due to mis-governance of the government.”
Dar belongs to Peoples Conference, which is a part of the ruling government in Jammu and Kashmir.
Speaking during motion of thanks on the governor’s address in the lower house, Dar said that they (PC) announced their alliance with the BJP before the elections and he still contested successfully from his constituency.
“Humne pehle bi bola tha ki Narendra Bhai Modi humara badda bhai hai aur aaj bie boltey hai (We had announced before elections that Modi is our big brother and still say so),” he said, adding that his party didn’t keep any ambiguity in making this announcement.
“We didn’t keep any room for any confusion, but announced it earlier and yet won the elections. But now we are a facing critical situation in our areas due to governance issues,” he said.
He said they, at the time of elections, told the people to vote for development “which however remained a distant dream.”
“I belong to a ruling party but still have grievances with the coalition government. The commitments made by the government remain confined to papers only. It has no implementation on ground,” he said, waving a booklet of governor’s address inside the House.
He said that the government was not taking MLAs on board during distribution of funds or other developmental works.
“People from my constituency spend Rs 2,000 to take a patient to a Srinagar hospital. Isn’t it injustice with them? The government is setting up five medical colleges in the state and it should have considered Kupwara for the same, given the population of the district,” he said.
Kupwara is the gateway of Kashmir but was ignored by the government, he said.
“MLAs are only ‘honorable’ and often called as ‘sir’, else we don’t see our existence in governance issues,” he said.
Referring to recruitment of SPOs and execution of MGNREGA works, he said, “I am also an MLA and have also made commitments with my people but the government never took me on board, which is disappointing.”
He said that the government has failed to address grievances of ruling party members.
“You failed to address grievance of Sukhnandan Kumar, who is also from a ruling party. It speaks volumes about governance on ground,” he said.
Earlier, BJP MLA Sukhnandan Kumar staged a walkout to protest against “non-seriousness” of the government to address issues of people from his area.