Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, June 17: Stating that it favours holding of delimitation in the State and supports the Prime Minister for the same in case he is serious to hold it, the Jammu Citizens’ Forum today sought setting up of three Regional Councils for Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh regions.
Maintaining that it does not favour trifurcation of the State, the Forum demanded setting up of statuary Regional Development Councils for the three regions. There is such a provision under Section 371 in the Indian Constitution and the Regional Councils should have adequate legislative and executive powers for their respective regions, the Forum added.
The Forum, in a meeting held under the chairmanship of its president R K Chadha, has also demanded separate funds allocation coming from the Center as well as from State’s own resources and plan funds for the three regions. The funds allocations should be earmarked for Jammu and Kashmir regions on the basis of revenue earned from the respective regions, said Chadha and also demanded that all the remaining departments should be bifurcated with separate heads in two regions. There should be also full-fledged separate administrative secretariats for the regions, to spare heavy expenditure being incurred on bi-annual Darbar move, he added.
To address the main grouse of Jammu region of being under represented in the State Assembly, the Forum supported the Prime Minister Narandra Modi and again demanded setting up of a fresh Delimitation Commission to carve out Assembly constituencies in the two regions, in keeping with population ratio, accessibility and topography, which is the set standard for creating Assembly constituencies. The Prime Minister should encourage meetings and discussion programs between common citizens of Jammu and Kashmir regions for this purpose to know the aspiration of the people of the State in original without the participation of political leaders, the Forum suggested.
The Forum meeting was attended by Add DGP (Retd) S S Wazir, former PSC Member Dr R Madan, Prof Aman Rathor, former member PSC; Arun Gupta, Chairman MIER; Arun Sharma, Retd Chief Engineer; R K Handa, Retd Vice Chairman JDA; M S Kapoor, Retd Engineer; Ashok Parihar, Advocate High Court; Veena Handa, Educationist; Sarita Oswal, Industrialist; Sameer Bhasin, PR and Media Consultant; K K Khosa, president K P Sabha; Jit Pal Sahni, Businessman and Sunny Dua, Journalist.
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