Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 16: Jammu Province People’s Forum (JPPF), an amalgam of more than 50 social, commercial and other organizations, has demanded declaration of Maharaja Hari Singh’s birthday as a State holiday and lambasted the BJP for not taking the issue up.
“We demand the immediate announcement of Maharaja Hari Singh’s birthday as a State holiday. The BJP-PDP Government should honour the resolution adopted by the Legislative Council,” JPPF working president, MS Katoch, told reporters here today.
“Maharaja Hari Singh, the last ruler of princely state, was not only a ruler but he was a social scientist having a great vision for the betterment of the society,” he said and added “We the public of Jammu and Kashmir thankful to him for taking a decision of accession with dominion of India otherwise the lives of crores of people living in J&K would have been miserable if acceded to Pakistan.”
“The list of activities of development are too long to produce here but all major institutions such as J&K Bank, PSC, High Court etc are his creations”, he said, adding that it is the need of the hour to declare his birthday a Gazetted holiday so that colourful programmes could be organize in the entire State to make the masses aware of his vision.
If Government fails to declare holiday on September 23, JPPF appealed to the entire public of the State to go on mass leave to avail leave of their own. He also asked Government to lift toll tax at Lakhanpur which is additional burden on the public.
Others present in the press conference were Rajiv Mahajan, Inderjeet Khajuria, ML Sharma, RS Jamwal, Avinash Bhatia, Rajinder Gupta, Uday Chand, Rajesh Thakur, Surinder Vir, Kuldeep Sharma, PR Slathia, Pritam Sharma, Prof OP Sharma, Balwan Singh, Gurmeet Singh, Sunita Sharma and Ajit Singh Adyal.
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