'Better To Save Lives Even If It Means...': Union Minister On Terror Threat To Kashmiri Pandits

A few days earlier, J&K Lt Governor threatened the employees with 'no work, no salary'.

Union Minister Jitendra Singh

Source : PTI

New Delhi: Hitting out at Jammu and Kashmir Lt Governor Manoj Sinha, Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Saturday said it is better to save a human life even if it means closing down a dozen offices. A few days earlier, J&K Lt Governor threatened the employees with 'no work, no salary'.

Addressing a public rally in Kathua, Singh said, "This should be addressed amicably and with sensitivity. My personal opinion is that nothing can be more valuable than a human life." "If there is a threat even to one life, it is better to save that life even if it means closing down a dozen offices," he said, PTI reported.

Singh was in Kathua to lay the foundation stone of the central PMGSY road from Bakhta to Magloor in the Jalota area.

Earlier, during a press conference in Jammu, Manoj Sinha said, "We provided salaries to employees till August this year after they asked for a cooling period following their departure from Kashmir to Jammu. The government can not pay salaries if teh employees are sitting at home and not joining work." 

Backing the Kashmiri pandits, Singh accused the opposition parties of following the policy of appeasement to the extent of being "inhuman." He alleged that these parties not only discriminated between people but also went to the extent of discriminating between the Line of Control and the International Border purely for vote considerations.

He said the previous governments headed by opposition parties crossed all limits of ethics and propriety when they allowed reservations for people living along LoC but denied the same benefits to the people living along the International Border, PTI reported.

"They did so because their MLAs were elected from the areas along the LoC, some of whom also became the ministers. They denied the same benefit to the people living along IB or on the Pakistan border, mostly in Kathua and Samba districts, because the people here did not vote for them," the Union minister said.

He said this discrepancy was corrected only after the Modi government came to power when the people living near the International Border were given justice with the grant of four per cent reservation, the same as people living along LoC.

Singh also said the government was making efforts to set up a satellite hospital and Tata Cancer Centre in Kathua. "This will provide the latest hi-tech facility for cancer patients from J&K, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh." On the Keedian Gandyal bridge, he said it was not constructed over the last 70 years because it would have benefitted mere 2,000 people, but "we had the courage and conviction to construct a bridge for these people at a cost of over Rs 150 Crore." Along the route of the holy Machil Yatra before 2014, there were neither toilets, mobile connectivity, nor electricity because these people did not figure in their list of the vote bank, he further said.

"It is this government which set up toilets and mobile towers there and recently sanctioned one exclusive solar power plant for the village," he added.

He said that due to the Modi government the Shahpur Kandi project was revived after 40 years, and the Ujh multipurpose irrigation project, which was conceived for the first time during Maharaja's rule, is also scheduled to take off very soon. 

(With inputs from PTI)