BJP asks Mehbooba to walk the talk

cluster development for the Kashmiri Pandits and create jobs for them. He said that the agenda of alliance was not only for Kashmir, but also for the Jammu region.

The state BJP leadership said that the Mehbooba Mufti government would have to take care of the aspiration and sentiments of the people of Jammu also. BJP’s senior state leader Nirmal Singh had recently said that their government would focus on the development of all the three regions of J&K.

Mehbooba Mufti, on the other hand, is desperate to win back her support in the Kashmir valley and has warned the police not to attack militant families and try to win people back by being polite to them. In a police function a few days ago, Mehbooba Mufti, who is also the state’s Home Minister, announced that she would double the reward for the cops if they caught the militants alive or made them surrender. She asked the police to follow the law before asking the people of Kashmir not to indulge in unlawful activities. Reports said that the CM, following her meeting with Rajnath Singh, asked her administration to clear relevant files and create 3,000 more jobs for the displaced Pandits.

Informed sources said that Mufti requested the Centre to launch some sort of confidence building measure including the release of political prisoners, halting the NIA investigations into the hawala links of Hurriyat leaders, and some sort of a ceasefire in South Kashmir to make the dialogue process a success. Army chief Bipin Rahwat has said that the announcement of an interlocutor to hold dialogue in Kashmir would not stop the Army from carrying out anti militancy operations. While the separatists are waiting for a signal from Pakistan to get involved in the peace process, the National Conference has described the fresh initiative as useless. NC patron Farooq Abdullah said that the Central government should implement the recommendations made by many interlocutors After three decades, drinking water scarcity looms large in Kashmir where dried riverbeds are not allowing water to reach the main reservoirs of about a hundred water supply schemes in the entire valley. There is no drinking water available in hundreds of villages, most of which are in Budgam, Baramulla and Kupwara, officials of PHE (Public Health Engineering) and irrigation department said.

With no rainfall in the October so far, the irrigation and flood control department has never seen water levels in the rivers so low. According to the officials of the PHE department, they have started tanker water supply to many villages in North Kashmir. The senior engineers of PHE said that 5560% capacity of more than a dozen water supply schemes in North Kashmir have been affected due to low levels of water in the river Jhelum. The government is trying to supply water through tankers in a majority of the villages in