By IANS,
Jammu : After the last year’s Amarnath shrine land row that led to a communal wedge between Jammu and Kashmir regions, it is now the politics over the setting up of the proposed central university that is stoking regional passions in the troubled state.
After a bitter war between the Jammu and Kashmir regions over the university venue, districts along the Pir Panjal mountainous range are now demanding that the varsity be established in their region.
Irrespective of their party affiliations, leaders of hilly and plains districts in the Jammu region are evoking sub-regional passions snowballing the issue into a major controversy.
Demanding that the university be established in the Pir Panjal range, some leaders in Doda, Poonch and Rajouri are decrying Jammu leaders. They are demanding that the university be set up in a nearby Samba district.
The stated position of the Congress on the issue notwithstanding, Abdul Majid Wani, a party legislator from Doda, stongly demands the university be set up in his district.
“We have been an educationally neglected part of the state. We must get the central university.” His demand runs contrary to his party’s line that the university be set up in Jammu.
Opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader and former minister Manjit Singh has also endorsed the stand that the university be set up in Samba district.
But his party colleague Zulfikar Choudhary, legislator from Darhal in Rajouri, strongly opposes Samba as the venue for the varsity.
“Rajouri and Poonch are the ideal places for the university,” he said.
The demands have come even as the Omar Abdullah government last Wednesday said the first central university in Jammu and Kashmir will come up in Jammu region’s Samba district. But the simmering discontent among various regions continues.
After the union government announced that the central university will be established in Jammu and Kashmir, the state government had identified a place close to Samba near Jammu for the site of the institution. But later there was a proposal to open it in the Kashmir Valley, triggering a series of demonstrations by student groups who were supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and some trade bodies here.