|
|
|
|
|
30 more panchayat members resign
Multi-pronged strategy for safety of panches
After quitting, panches too scared to return home
In protest against militant attacks, 22 panchayat members resigned in Srinagar on Sunday. A Tribune photograph |
|
|
Hockey team coach held for ‘molesting’ Punjab players
News Analysis
India and Pakistan hold a Brigadier-level flag meeting at Chakan da Bagh in Poonch on Monday. A Tribune photograph
NC yet to take a call on 73rd Amendment
30 passengers go across LoC on Karvan-e-Aman
Trucks from Muzaffarabad in the PoK cross the LoC at Kaman post in Uri.
Tribune photo: Amin War
Village heads should work in tandem with Army: Lt Gen Prakash
PDP threatens stir over delay in civic elections
Lashkar-e-Toiba man arrested
|
|
30 more panchayat members resign
Srinagar, January 14 Sarpanch from Rashidabad village Riyaz Ahmad Lone, who resigned today, told The Tribune that 35 panchayat members had resigned along with him, including 10 from his area. Among those who resigned today included three women panchayat members, Lone said. Lone said they had publicly offered their resignations and would officially resign at the office of the Deputy Commissioner, Baramulla, tomorrow. “We had resigned earlier (last year) also, but it (government) refused to accept our resignations
then,” he said. He said they won’t accept any security cover, saying it will not help them. Lone said they were afraid to go home since the recent attacks on panchayat members in the area. Twentytwo sarpanches and panches from the Sopore area resigned before the media in Srinagar yesterday. The resignations by the panchayat members comes days after two of their colleagues were shot outside their houses by suspected militants in Sopore.
|
||
|
Multi-pronged strategy for safety of panches
Jammu, January 14 Official sources said the sarpanches and panches in some areas of the Valley had been asked to follow certain dos and don’ts to be issued by the police. “The sarpanches and panches are to be advised to avoid venturing out of
their houses during late hours in the night. A comprehensive strategy will be available with the security agencies within a week,” a source said. Sources claimed a number of cases relating to violence against panchayat members had been investigated and worked out. “The investigations reveal that subversive elements and their sympathisers are being used by anti-social elements for meeting their political and personal ends,” the source said. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who had drawn sharp criticism from various quarters, particularly from the panchayat members, for his government’s alleged failure to protect the panches and sarpanches, wrote on micro-blogging site Twitter, “We are committed to doing everything possible to keep elected representatives safe and we will continue doing that whatever the odds.” Omar reviewed the law and order and security situation at a high level meeting in Srinagar yesterday. Suresh Kumar, Principal Secretary (Home), said all possible measures were being put in place to ensure the safety of the panchayat members in the state. “Area domination is there and night patrolling is being intensified,” Kumar said. He, however, refused to divulge the details regarding security measures being taken by the state government to protect the panchayat members from possible terror attacks. Three sarpanches and a naib sarpanch have been killed by suspected militants in the Valley since the panchayat elections were held in the state in June 2011. A woman panch is battling for life in Srinagar after she was fired at by some unidentified gunmen in Hardshiva village of Sopore on January 12. DGP Ashok Prasad said the panchayat members were being asked to follow certain dos and don’ts. The sarpanches and panches under the banner of the All Jammu Kashmir Panchayat Conference today held demonstrations at Samba, Mendhar and Reasi towns to protest the killing of panches in Kashmir.
|
||
|
After quitting, panches too scared to return home
Srinagar, January 14 Twentytwo panchayat members resigned yesterday. Many from the group of 22 sarpanches and panches from Hardshiva, Shiv and Yemberzalwari villages of Sopore, a volatile region in north Kashmir, spent the Sunday night with their relatives and friends in the city and in neighbouring villages of Sopore. The group travelled to Srinagar, more than 50 km from Sopore town, on Sunday morning to announce their resignations before the media. Some of them have since been reluctant to return home to Sopore, where one sarpanch was killed and a woman panch was shot at. Suspected militants shot dead Habibullah Mir, sarpanch of Gooripora village in Sopore town, near his home on Friday. A day later, a woman panch, Zoona, was shot outside her house in Hardshiva village. A senior doctor at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) said, “Her condition is not yet stable. She continues to be critical.” Zoona is being treated for a firearm injury at the Surgical Intensive Care Unit of the Valley’s tertiary care hospital. Bilal Ahmad Dar, a panch from Hardshiva village and Zoona’s neighbour, said he along with other panchayat members have not returned home. “We are afraid,” said Dar, who spent the night and the entire day on the run, shuttling between his relatives and friends in the city here. “We are yet to decide what to do. We are not sure about when to return home. Until the situation gets better, we will be cautious.” Dar’s name, according to Zoona’s husband Mohammad Ramzan, was mentioned in the list of panchayat members that Zoona’s assailant was carrying. “If it (government) gives us security, we will be more insecure,” he said. Dar, who was accompanied by another village panch Manzoor Ahmad Dengru, said the only option to secure their lives is that the government should dissolve the panchayats. Dar said some of the panchayat members who resigned yesterday were staying in Srinagar hotels and some were putting up with their relatives in adjoining villages of Sopore. Manzoor Ahmad Rather, a sarpanch from Sopore, who resigned yesterday and returned home, said he would officially resign on Tuesday. He said a few panchayat members had returned home but many were in hiding. Baramulla Deputy Commissioner Khawaja Ghulam Ahmad said he had received a resignation from a panch of the Zainageer block in Sopore. “I have forwarded it to the district panchayat officer. The panch has quoted personal reason for the resignation,” he said.
|
||
|
Hockey team coach held for ‘molesting’ Punjab players
Hyderabad, January 14 Singh was arrested based on a complaint filed by some members of the Punjab hockey team. They alleged that the coach tried to molest them on a train while they were on their way to Hyderabad to participate in the ongoing U-20 National Women’s Hockey Tournament. “We have arrested him and handed over the case to the Railway Police,” said Additional Director General of Police Tejdeep Kaur
Menon. Singh was arrested from the Delhi-bound Andhra Pradesh Express at Ramagundam in Karimnagar district, about 210 km from here, and brought to
Hyderabad. He was trying to escape when the police caught him and took him into custody. The coach has been charged under Sections 354 and 506 of the IPC for trying to outrage the modesty of a girl and criminal intimidation. “We have received a complaint from five minor girls that the coach has harassed and molested them. We came to know that this man fled Hyderabad and was travelling by some train. We scanned all trains and found him on AP Express. He was arrested and brought to
Hyderabad,” said Tejdeep Kaur, who is one of the organisers of the tournament. After his arrest, Singh was questioned by the police at the Gachibowli Stadium here and was later handed over to the Railway Police. Singh along with the J&K team had arrived in the city to participate in the tournament which began on January 10. The team, however, was knocked out of the tournament on Friday. The matter came to the fore when some hockey players from Punjab approached Tejdeep Kaur on Sunday, alleging that Singh, who had travelled in the same train, had misbehaved with them between Patiala and Delhi during their journey to
Hyderabad. Jammu: President of the J&K Hockey Association (JKHA) Balwinder Singh, when contacted, said: “We are trying to contact officials at Hyderabad to get the exact information. As far as I know, Angad holds a good character”. “We have to yet confirm this report. If allegations against him are proved, the association will not hesitate to take strict action against him,” the JKHA president maintained.
|
||
|
News Analysis
Jammu, January 14 Neither such flag meetings in the past have yielded anything nor will they after today's meeting of Brigadier-level officers of the two sides at Chakan da Bagh in Poonch. It is the repeat of the same old story time and again, meetings are held, protests are exchanged, and within hours the next ceasefire violation begins. Pakistan, which is facing internal trouble from all sides, had been trying to divert the attention of its people from drone attacks and financial and political difficulties to Kashmir. Internationally, Pakistan has already been condemned as “hub of
terrorism”. Seen in that context, Army chief General Bikram Singh had already anticipated the Pakistani response in the backdrop of what Pakistan’s political leadership and army had been saying after the January 8 brutal killings of the two Indian soldiers. That they were neither the violators of ceasefire, nor killers, leave alone the ones who mutilated bodies of the soldiers on this side of the LoC. They were riveting the attention to the January 6 incident in which they alleged that the Indian Army had killed one of their soldiers in the Uri sector in north Kashmir. At the flag meeting, Pakistan repeated the same old allegations and refused to accept even a bit of the Indian view that ceasefire violations were invoked by Pakistan and its troops had conducted the cross-LoC raids. So the meeting ended on the expected lines: nothing substantial. At the end of the day, the standard line of the Indian Army was that it “reserved the right to retaliate, if provoked”, as if the January 8 incident was not provocation. Army sources said that despite this meeting at Chakan da Bagh on the LoC nothing is going to change on the border as Pakistan had not learnt any of the lessons from its past misadventures, Kargil conflict of 1999 in particular. Pakistan will not halt its aggressive designs as it wants to keep the Kashmir issue alive, after having failed in its desperate attempts to up the ante in Kashmir in the past two years. It had been violating the ceasefire since January 2005, and has gone unpunished because Indians are shackled by what they call their wish not to “escalate the situation on the borders”, and at best they have offered what they call “restraint response”. Pakistan, which excels at playing the hide-and-seek game with its patron and financer, the USA (the safe house of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden on its soil offered a classic example of its duplicity), would never acknowledge the truth about what it was doing on the LoC, said the sources. So, there can be no change of heart in Pakistan and its establishment. |
||
|
NC yet to take a call on 73rd Amendment
Jammu, January 14 The Congress wants that the government should immediately adopt recommendations made by the two committees constituted by J&K Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) chief Saifuddin Soz but the National Conference is not in a hurry to take any final decision without thoroughly going through the reports. Sources said that at the meeting of the Coordination Committee of coalition partners which was held today, Congress members impressed upon National Conference leaders to approve the recommendations so that they could be forwarded to the Cabinet for adoption. Despite strong arguments by the Congress, National Conference members made it clear that they would thoroughly go through the reports before taking a final decision, the sources said. Soz, chairman of the Coordination Committee, represented the Congress along with Deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand while the National Conference was represented by Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ali Mohammad Sagar at the meeting. Soz had constituted two committees to identify relevant provisions of the 73rd Amendment which could be implemented in J&K to empower the panchayats. These committees had submitted their reports, which were placed before Coordination Committee members today at the meeting. After the meeting, the Finance Minister disclosed that the recommendations of the internal committees constituted by Soz were placed before the members. “We will go through these recommendations and would meet again very soon to take a final decision on these recommendations,” Rather said. While candidly admitting that the Congress was not reluctant to implement the 73rd Amendment in toto, Soz said the committees constituted by the Congress had recommended certain provisions which would be beneficial for empowering panchayats in J&K. The sources said the committees had opposed any move to nominate chairman of the district development council (DDC). They had also recommended that the DDC chairman should be elected and there should provision of reservation for women, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in the block development councils and district development councils.
|
||
|
30 passengers go across LoC on Karvan-e-Aman
Srinagar, January 14 The transit had assumed significance as the bus service and trade from Poonch, another trading point between the
two Kashmirs, was halted by Pakistan following the brutal killing of two Indian soldiers on
January 8. There were apprehensions that after the suspension of the cross-LoC bus on Friday that plies on the Poonch-Rawalkote route, the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus might also get
suspended. The officials who oversaw the transit of passengers through Aman Setu from the Kaman Transit Point today described the environment at the LoC in the Uri sector as “normal and smooth”. “It was a smooth affair. All agencies involved in the event from both sides did their respective work smoothly,” said Regional Passport Officer Srinagar Firdous Iqbal, whose office is entrusted with issuing travel permits for the Karvan-e-Aman passengers. “A total of 52 passengers crossed the LoC at the Kaman Transit Point, which includes 30 persons
from this side who crossed over to the other side. Whereas from that (Pakistani) side, 22 persons arrived,” Iqbal said. The bus service between Srinagar-Muzaffarabad was started on April 7, 2005, for the divided families in both parts of the Kashmir. Currently, the service operates once a week on every Monday. The crossing of the
passengers at the KT took place between 1.30 and 2pm. The bus, which had left Srinagar for the Kaman post early morning, carried 30 passengers, including the guests who had arrived from the PoK earlier and wanted to go back to their homes after visiting their relatives in Kashmir. Following ceasefire violation by Pakistan on January 6 in the Uri sector and “controlled retaliation” carried out by the Indian Army, Pakistan soldiers had brutally killed two Indian soldiers in the Poonch sector, triggering widespread anger in the country.
|
||
|
Village heads should work in tandem with Army: Lt Gen Prakash
Kulgam, January 14 “You should immediately inform the Army as and when you find any suspicious movement in your neighbourhoods. The Army will take due cognisance of any threats to you,” said Lt Gen Om Prakash. He was interacting with the panchayat members at 1 Rashtriya Rifles headquarters in the Frisal area of Kulgam district. He told the panchayat members that some people didn’t want peace to prevail in the Valley. “If you work in tandem with security forces, we will surely be able to curb such elements,” he said. The GOC maintained that the killings of the panchayat members may not necessarily be militancy-related. “There might be other angles to the killings as well. The investigations are going on and the culprits will be nabbed soon,” said the GOC, while reacting to an earlier statement by the CRPF IG about the killings. “Personal animosity may well be a reason behind the killings,” the CRPF IG had earlier said. The GOC, while talking to the media about the recent skirmishes on the Line of Control (LoC), said Pakistan was trying to escalate the tension unnecessarily. “We are a disciplined Army and no matter what the provocation, we will retaliate in a very controlled manner, if necessary,” the GOC said. He, however, said trade between the two parts of Kashmir was not affected because of the skirmishes on the LoC. “Trade per say is a very big word and is between two countries. It has remained unfazed so far between this part of Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir,” the GOC said.
|
||
|
PDP threatens stir over delay in civic elections
Jammu, January 14 The PDP warned that party would not allow the National Conference-led coalition regime to capture democratic institutions like the ULBs and panchayats through deceit tactics. Addressing a press conference here today, PDP spokesman Rangil Singh said the ULBs elections were due since February 2010 but the state government had been delaying these elections only to continue its control over such democratic institutions through undemocratic means. Singh said the PDP had already announced to hold demonstrations at all district headquarters against the failure of the state government on all fronts. “In the days to come, the PDP would take this fight on the streets to foil any attempt of the coalition government to capture the democratic institutions,” he warned. “The present regime has been postponing the ULBs elections with lame excuses just to befool people. The state government has been promising to conduct the Urban Local Bodies elections but these promises are yet to be fulfilled. During the last budget session, it was promised in the Governor’s address to conduct the ULBs elections but the promise remained only on papers. Even Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had promised to conduct the ULBs elections but this regime has even undermined the institution of the Governor by not fulfilling the promise of conducting the ULBs elections,” Singh said.
|
||
|
Lashkar-e-Toiba man arrested
Srinagar, January 14 The OGW has been identified as Aijaz Ahmad Reshi alias Abu Bakr, a resident of Mundji village near Sopore town. The local police unit, along with 189 battalion of CRPF, apprehended Bakr while patrolling near a fruit orchard in the area of Arampora in Sopore, the police said. The police registered a case and investigations
are going on, the spokesman said.
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | E-mail | |
Security forces have worked out a “multi-pronged strategy” to ensure the safety and security of the elected panchayat representatives across the Valley.
Apart from intensifying night patrolling and reviewing area-specific security, the security agencies have identified the vulnerable areas in the Valley where the security threat perception to panchayat members is high.
north Kashmir and its adjoining areas camped in the summer capital last night following a spate of fatal attacks that forced them to resign publicly yesterday.
Jammu, January 14
passengers crossed the dividing line at the Kaman peace bridge in Uri today.
These included the 30 passengers who had boarded the Karvan-e-Aman (caravan of peace) bus at Srinagar early this morning and the 22 persons who had arrived from Muzaffarabad after crossing the Aman Setu (peace bridge), which connects the two divided Kashmirs at Kaman Transit Point
(KTP).
