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Peace imperative for development, employment generation: Mehbooba

KT NEWS SERVICE. Dated: 3/26/2017 11:38:56 PM

SRINAGAR, Mar 26: The Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today made fervent appeal to people to maintain peace to ensure a new era of development in the state.
“Peace is imperative for over-all development. I appeal people to maintain peace. With peace, we can touch new heights of developments,” she said while addressing party workers of Batamalo and Amira Kadal here.
Chief Minister said, “Kashmir suffered immensely due to disturbances from time to time. As we formed the government, we had great plans for developments. But last year’s disturbances created hurdles. We hope that people will help us in maintaining peace in future. This will not only lead to development but will create more and more employment for unemployed youth,” she said.
Terming Srinagar as the heart of Kashmir valley, Mehbooba said the city remained and would continue to be in the focus of her party’s developmental agenda for the state.
She added that Srinagar city currently was faced with huge challenges on account of civic infrastructure, housing congestion, heavy traffic, solid waste management and other civic issues. She said her government was well aware of these problems and many mega or micro projects for city’s development had either been initiated or conceptualized.
Specifying, the Chief Minister said just recently she got the Rs 2100 Cr ring road project for Srinagar city approved by the Centre and work on the same would start this year only. Similarly many other big projects which had either ADB or World Bank funding were being started, she said.
Terming peace as pre requisite for undertaking developmental activities, Mehbooba said she was aware of the difficulties of people of Srinagar, particularly downtown city. She said the people of the Srinagar city maintained peace despite provocations during the unrest of last year which needed to be appreciated. “I know the brunt you bore (during the unrest) as a majority of city dwellers are daily earners who faced difficulties but maintained calm,” she added.
The Chief Minister said she planned to develop Srinagar city as a tourism destination in itself as it had a rich and varied heritage, shrines, handicrafts, scenic spots and water bodies besides adventure and cultural attractions. Under this plan, she said, old city would be developed as a heritage track showcasing all the features Srinagar city was known for world over. This would mitigate the problem of unemployment among youth to a large extent and give the economy of the city dwellers a boost who didn’t have any other means of livelihood, she said.
Mehbooba said former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed had a special love for Srinagar and would often refer to it as his Dil (heart). “During the 10 months of his tenure as Chief Minister, Mufti visited the city five times and even the last engagement he undertook was a long tour of the whole city,” she told the workers and expressed her resolve to carry forward this mission of changing the developmental profile of the city in the coming years.
On her party’s objectives, Mehbooba said PDP was formed with a definite aim of getting Jammu and Kashmir out of the difficulties it had been in for so long. “You saw a glimpse of that during the three year rule of the party from 2002 to 2005 when we convinced the national leadership to take many path breaking historic decisions giving people here the relief they were crying for,” she reminded the workers.
“We hope to do so again this time”, she said while appealing people to maintain peace so that not only do the developmental activities could carry on smoothly but also the political process to relieve the people from the perennial uncertainty and desolation. She said vote to the candidates of the party would be a declaration for the agenda of transformation and reconciliation in the state.
Senior party leader and chief spokesperson Dr Mehboob Beg in his address said the historic contribution of PDP had been to provide an alternative platform to the people by providing space and voice to the voiceless in the state. He said the party’s agenda had been set to give relief to the disadvantaged sections of the society.
Senior party leaders and education minister Syed Altaf Bukhari and MLA Noor Mohammed Sheikh also addressed the meetings.