Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Feb 23: While demanding a judicial probe into killing of a civilian at Sarore near Bari Brahmana in district Samba during police action on Monday, Peoples Democratic Party has said that Government must avoid selective approach in eviction drive and police should follow standard operation procedures while dealing with civilians.
Addressing press conference at Party office here today, senior PDP leaders and former ministers Naeem Akhtar and Chowdhary Zulfkar Ali condemned killing of a person from Gujjar community at Saroor near Bari Brahmana on Monday and demanded that Governor NN Vohra should act on the matter immediately by ordering judicial probe. The PDP leaders also demanded compensation for the kin of the deceased.
While describing the eviction drive as selective, Mr Naeem said that PDP is not against removing encroachments on Government land but the drive should not be selective.
“Why can’t we start eviction drive from influential and wealthy people and why it is always started from poor and houseless people’’, Mr Naeem questioned adding that PDP has clear stand on the issue that there should be proper policy on the matter and those evicted must be given houses at alternate places so that they do not suffer.
He said that Central Government is having good plan for rehabilitation of 5 crore houseless people and Modi Govt should extend this scheme for these nomads and other houseless people of J&K so that the situation like this do not arise. This could have been avoided. Such people should be rehabilitated before the launch of any eviction drive, he added.
Questioning the action of police, the PDP leaders said that forces have not adopted restraint while dealing with mob. They said that the situation could have been avoided but it was not tackled properly which resulted into death of a person. ‘’Fire was opened in irresponsible manner on civilian so there is need to fix responsibility’’, they said adding that Governor Administration must take this issue seriously and act immediately on the matter.
PDP general secretary Ved Mahajan and senior leader Hamid Choudhary were also present on the occasion.
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