Developmental infrastructural projects could agreeably suffer temporarily due to reasons like non availability of funds or some technical hitches or even due to certain court injunctions but they can suffer due to political squabbles is rarely heard of as can be seen in the case of a project in Rajouri to build a mini secretariat to house most of the departments functioning there . This project was sanctioned in the year 2013 and after some initial works on it was virtually abandoned in March 2015 and continues to be in that state even as on date .
This complex would have proved beneficial in various ways in that not only almost all district level Government offices would have been functioning from here under one roof with facilities like a large conference Hall , parking and other facilities but lot of time could have been saved in getting and disposing of inter departmental queries and correspondences instead of what was prevalent otherwise but public in particular would have been greatly benefitted in terms of saving of time and botheration of waits and allied officialdom lingering practices. The “ill- fated” Rajouri secretariat complex has other things too to lament about in that those of similar type of complexes sanctioned after the one under reference have since been completed and are functional as well like the one at Reasi and the other one in Poonch is near completion.
This complex was made to plunge in a state of suspended animation or hibernation of unspecified period only after 15 percent of work completed on it. The half built standing pillars at the site speak about the royalty and whims of those in our top administration as also about some political lords who, though at the moment, have been circumstantially rendered to adopt low profile in matters under reference, due to which this complex which by now should have been fully functional, is nowhere seen to get out of the present mire. Who decided later to shift the complex to new location and why and what about the public money spent on it till the stage of its abandonment must be made public . From old DC office to the one at Department of Education and again to Muradpur this complex has been subjected to shuttle cocking of peculiar nature thanks to politicians’ writ belonging to the PDD and the BJP. This is, in simpler parlance, hogwash of things where instead prudence, probity and performance should all have been employed in order to see public funds were not wasted even to the negligible levels.
Now, see who was going to suffer due to the unavoidable and totally unacceptable reasons of making this project suffer, it was only the public and their money as by going into rough estimates even on the lower side, this very project would now cost not less than Rs.15 crore due to cost escalation . There is a culture of just playing with public money in whatever way possible with impunity as there is no accountability and seriously calling for an explanation for purposes of either recovering the money wasted or the difference between the sanctioned cost and the escalated one from the ones found responsible for such wilful goofs. Times are very hard ahead and more focus on accountability would pre-empt and frustrate such political or administrative luxuries and if changes for the better start taking place right from now , it would be not too late. We, therefore, urge the authorities concerned to take an urgent call on this abandoned project and arrange to kick-start work on it as early as possible.
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