NC, PDP, Cong made fortunes in ‘Roshni’ scam: Thakur

Union Minister Anurag Thakur addressing election rally at Vijaypur on Wednesday. —Excelsior/Badyal
Union Minister Anurag Thakur addressing election rally at Vijaypur on Wednesday. —Excelsior/Badyal

‘Gupkaris discriminated with common masses’

Excelsior Correspondent

SAMBA, Dec 2: Anurag Singh Thakur, Union Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs, in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir DDC elections, today said that Gupkar Alliance only worked to hand over power to their generations and even practiced nepotism and scandals.
Thakur said, “In the last 70 years, the Gupkar coalition has held Jammu and Kashmir hostage. For decades of enjoying the power, they ensured the step-motherly treatment to people of erstwhile State, who only cared for their children and their families. They stayed in palaces and confined the people in a 2-room house, provided good education to their children abroad and instead of setting up school-colleges for the youth here, they handed them stones & guns in their hands, kept a good arrangement of drinking water for themselves and forced the mothers-sisters here to fetch drinking water from miles, flew in helicopters themselves but never worried about road-rail for the State. They only cared about themselves and their families and continued to push the J&K into the trough so as to gain political advantages and funds from Centre.
Speaking further, Thakur said, “They strengthened the roots of nepotism not only in power or politics but also in scams. Farooq Abdullah, whose three generations ruled Jammu and Kashmir, bought three kanals of land from different landowners at Khasra No. 21 in Sunjawan in Jammu in 1998. When Dr. Abdullah started construction of a house on this land, he also encroached seven Kanals of adjoining land. Abdullah’s brother Mustafa Kamal encroached two Kanals forest land in Sunjwan of Bahu, sister Suraiya Mattu and brother-in-law grabbed three Kanals 12 Marlas of land in their name under this Act, he added.
He said the office of the National Conference was also built by taking advantage of the Roshni Act. The NC, PDP and Congress have jointly made fortunes in the country’s most sensational scam of 25000 crore rupees, for which the people of the J&K are going to teach them a lesson in these DDC elections.
Similarly family of Madan Lal former MP, Aijaz Khan and Taj Mohiddun former ministers and many more tall leaders of this Alliance have grabbed land under this scheme, he said.
J&K BJP vice-president, Assem Gupta, former Minister, Chander Prakash Ganga and other senior leaders of party also accompanied Union MoS in the rally.