By IANS,
Srinagar : Jammu and Kashmir Finance Minister Tariq Hamid Karra Friday accused the state’s anti-corruption agency of targeting people of a particular region and religion and said that it was preventing development work in the Kashmir Valley.
“It is ironic that the vigilance organisation has been consistently not only targeting the employees of a particular region and religion, but has now started singularly meddling in the developmental projects being executed in the Kashmir Valley, with the obvious ulterior motive of preventing any infrastructural development in the region,” Karra said in a press statement.
”Such high-handedness of the vigilance organisation is fraught with serious political implications and no conscientious politician from the region can be a mute spectator to this discriminatory selective-targeting tactics of the organisation,” the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader added.
Quoting an example, Karra said there had been repeated attempts by the vigilance organisation to stall the work on widening of a road in Srinagar although it had been cleared by a high-level committee headed by the divisional commissioner of Kashmir.
“While I would appreciate action against corrupt elements in the government and the administration, but it should not be on a selective and regional basis,” Karra said.
The state anti-corruption organisation works directly under Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Karra recently raked up a controversy when he favoured Jammu and Kashmir having its own currency. However, he later dissociated himself from the statement after it drew considerable flak from many quarters inside and outside Kashmir.