‘People should not get carried away by false propaganda of critics’
Avtar Bhat
JAMMU, July 16 : Accusing the previous Central and State Governments of ignoring Jammu as well as Ladakh in every sector of life, Union Minister in PMO with Independent charge of North Eastern States, Dr Jitendra Singh today said that 70 year long discrimination with Jammu and Ladakh ended during the last six years of Narendra Modi Government at Centre which is working on the basic principle of governance “justice to all and appeasement to none’’.
Addressing online inaugural programme of the new batch of Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Jammu from New Delhi today, Dr Jitendra Sangh said that Modi Government has undone the discrimination against the Jammu as well as Ladakh to which they were subjected by the successive Central and State Governments. “The leaders of these parties who were in power over the years still mislead the people for their vested interests and it is our duty that we should go and tell the people the truth and expose those who have been misleading them for decades together’’, he added.
Maintaining that we are living in an evidence based age, Dr Jitendra Singh asked people not to get carried away by the false propaganda made by such vested interests and instead go by evidence. “This Government has undone discrimination with Jammu region in every sector including education’’ he said while referring to establishment of various professional institutes of education including IIM, IIT, AIIMS and six Centrally funded Medical Colleges and Engineering Colleges etc in J&K. Lashing out at the critics, he said those who are criticising this Government and levelling false allegations should also go by evidence.
Without naming any party, he asked who were responsible for grave injustice with West Pak refugees during last seven decades and deprived them of their Constitutional rights just for the sake of vote bank politics. “It was the Modi Government which had to redeem for all the sins of previous Governments by granting citizenship rights to them in J&K besides giving reservation rights to people living along International Border (IB) in Jammu region at par with people living along Line of Control (LoC) who too had become the victims of vote bank politics’’, Dr Jitendra Singh added.
The Union Minister said that Jammu is fast emerging as a major education hub and the boost received by Jammu under the Modi Government in the education sector is far more compared to many other surrounding regions.
Dr Jitendra Singh recalled that in the last six years, Jammu has received six to seven academic institutes of national importance, in addition to nearly ten more Centrally funded education institutions. The academic institutions of national importance allocated to Jammu Division include the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), first-ever National Institute of High-altitude Medicine and North India’s first Biotech Industrial Park cum Research Institution. Even though the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) had started its regional centre around 2012-13 but the setting up of a permanent campus was undertaken under the present Government and similarly the Indian Institute of Integrated Medicines (IIIM) was given a big boost by this Government with international collaboration projects.
The Centrally funded academic institutions allotted to Jammu Division in the last six years, said Dr Jitendra Singh, include four Medical Colleges, host of RUSA funded Engineering Colleges, Ayurvedic Colleges and Homeopathic College. This has addressed the complaint of regional discrimination of the past decades and placed Jammu way ahead as an academic centre, he added.
Dr Jitendra Singh said as far as IIM, Jammu is concerned, it started its academic session at the right time when the constitutional barriers interfering with the healthy growth of education institutes have been removed since 5-6 August 2019. He said, the biggest constraints for national level institutions like IIM, IIT and AIIMS was that the best of the faculty from the rest of India felt discouraged to take up teaching assignments because they were debarred from the basic amenities like purchasing a plot of land for construction of house or seeking of admission for their children in academic institutions, but in the changed scenario it is hoped that Jammu will get the benefit of some of best faculty from all over. A positive outcome of new Domicile Law would be the enrichment of academic faculty at Jammu in all the new premier institutes, he added.
He also said that IIM, IIT and other institutes will have a bigger contribution to make since Jammu is now opening up for big investments.
Dr Jitendra Singh expressed satisfaction to note that the new batch of scholars at IIM included students from as many as 30 different States/UTs of India which, he said, will give it a pan-Indian face. He hoped that the scholars from all over India will go back from Jammu with rich experience of the native culture here and, would, thus also act as ambassadors of healthy cultural symbiosis. With 35% of the scholars belonging to the Engineering stream, he hoped that their technical skills would do value-addition to them in carrying forward several of the new flagship programmes initiated by the Modi Government.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, the new generation of management scholars enjoys a special privilege because India today is on the threshold of becoming a superpower and this generation of experts will have the satisfaction of telling their children and grandchildren that they too were architects of the ‘New India’, envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Dr Milind Kamble, Chairman of Board of Governors, IIM and Professor B S Sahya, Founder Director of IIM Jammu also spoke on the occasion. A video film was played to depict a walk-through of the upcoming new campus of IIM, Jammu.
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