Police foil PDP’s march in Jammu against ‘brazen sale of resources’

PTI, Dec 29, 2021, 5:18 PM IST

Two days after the Jammu and Kashmir administration signed 39 MoUs with the country’s real estate investors, PDP’s youth wing on Wednesday tried to march to the Raj Bhawan here against what it called “brazen sale of resources” to corporate houses. However, they said the police stopped them from marching ahead.

The Jammu and Kashmir government on Monday opened the Union Territory to the country’s real estate investors by signing Memorandum of Understanding for projects pertaining to housing, hotel and other commercial activities worth nearly Rs 19,000 crore.

Raising slogans against the BJP and lieutenant governor administration, protesters from the Peoples Democratic Party alleged that the Centre, under the garb of bringing investment, was selling resources of the erstwhile state to corporate houses. “On the one hand, the BJP government has assured to secure the culture identity and jobs of people of Ladakh region while on the other, Jammu and Kashmir is being thrown open for non-locals endangering its unique culture and ethnical identity,” a party leader said.

He alleged that the BJP government lacked vision for Jammu and Kashmir and that the biggest issue in the Union Territory was unemployment, which according to him has shot up to 18 per cent. “Those in Delhi are using Jammu as a laboratory. BJP’s vision is only to divide and rule, to make people fight against each other and to sell our resources to outsiders,” the leader said. He said the PDP will not be a mute spectator to the “brazen loot” by the administration which has no stake in the society. The PDP members accused the officers of making policies without understanding the ground realities. “The only duty the administration is discharging is to blindly follow and implement dictates from Delhi and Nagpur,” the leader said.