Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Oct 22: Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said here today that the results of the recently held urban local body elections clearly indicate that the people of the State, particularly in the Jammu region, had punished the opposition parties for unreasonably and unsubstantiatedly maligning the BJP and its top leadership headed by Narendra Modi.
Speaking to media persons on the sidelines of an informal interaction with PhD and Research Scholars from Jammu University who felicitated him for setting up an ISRO Centre here, Dr Jitendra Singh said, Congress and its allies like National Conference, are still trapped in the past while the times have moved ahead. He said, the State and local leaders of these Parties continuously sought to rake up public passions by raising emotive issues to target BJP, without realizing that 70% of the population today comprises youth who are well informed and give credence to the evidence of enormous development and transformative work happening on the ground.
Taking a dig at the Congress and its allies for trying to bluff the people with the outdated tricks of the past, Dr Jitendra Singh cited the example of how over the last one year continuously, Congress and National Conference had sought to provoke the youth of Jammu region by invoking the legacy of Maharaja Hari Singh, but they under-estimated the knowledge of history among today’s youth who were well informed and knew that it was infact Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah who had together done the greatest harm to the legacy of the Dogra ruler by forcing Maharaja Hari Singh into a lonely exile out of Jammu & Kashmir and the Maharaja finally breathed his last in distant Mumbai.
Dr Jitendra Singh also observed that most of the Independent candidates who emerged victorious particularly in Kathua, Udhampur and Jammu districts, owe allegiance to the BJP and its ideology, and are a part of the BJP family. Significantly, he said, the proxy candidates put up by other Parties or by certain disgruntled fringe groups had failed to make an impact, he said.
Earlier, Dr Jitendra Singh held an hour-long informal interactive session with PhD and other Scholars from Jammu University belonging to different departments, who discussed with him issues related to academics, youth aspirations and development. The young participants were highly appreciative of some of the path-breaking youth-oriented initiatives taken by Dr Jitendra Singh over the last four years, particularly the ISRO Centre at Jammu, Engineering College, Medical College, Bio-Tech Park, new University Campus and Passport Office at Kathua, Medical College and National Institute for High Altitude Medicinal Plants in district Doda, reservation for students living along the International Border (IB), Passport Office, Radio Station and Devika Conservation Project in Udhampur, etc.
Dr Jitendra Singh emphasized on creating exclusive character of the University and cited the example of Guwahati University where he had, through the Ministry of DoNER, opened an exclusive department of Brahmaputra Study Centre. He suggested that the land at the new University Campus at Kathua could be used for bringing up the State’s first-ever department of “Remote Sensing”. The scholars’ group was led by Dr Lokinder Singh, Dr Gagan Verma, Dr D.S. Manhas, Raveil Parihar, Pankaj Parashar, Tsering Tondup, Angad Shaan, Sandeep Kotwal, Abhinandan Khajuria, Shami Manhas, Sajan Thakur, Sandeep Sharma, Nawang Tashi, Sandeep Sharma, Kulveer Singh Parihar and others.
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