Passing the buck

The question of regularizing unauthorized housing colonies in the twin capital cities of Srinagar and Jammu, though brought under discussion several times at the cabinet level, has become a buck that is being passed on from hand to hand just because the Government and its agencies are least interested in giving any shape to modernizing of the cities in question. The Chief Secretary who was to chair the committee appointed by the cabinet to report on the unauthorized housing colonies, never called the meeting and passed on the task to a sub-committee which met but sparingly and without submitting the report. There is no clear cut policy on raising housing colonies in the twin cities where there is great pressure for housing activity. The Chief Minister in one of his previous public speeches had said that he would ask the centre to provide a hefty sum of 48,000 crore rupees to invest in planning new cities of Srinagar and Jammu as the existing ones had exhausted their capacity. We would highly appreciate if the Chief Minister actively pursues the agenda of town planning which would mean building the twin cities at Jammu and Srinagar. The two capitals of the State need to be given new look with complete modern type infrastructure of a new township.