Jammu: Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government has been consistently ensuring equal shares for Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir regions without any regional discrimination, said Union minister Jeetendra Singh Sunday. "Ever since Modi took over as prime minister in 2014, there has been a cautious effort to correct regional imbalances of the past and strike an optimum regional parity in all the centrally-aided initiatives," said Singh.

The minister of state in the Prime Minister's Office made the remark while addressing a gathering after distributing Doordarshan dish set top boxes free of cost to the people living in Hiranagar border belt of Kathua district. Singh said a total of 30,000 DD set-top boxes would be distributed in the initial phase of the programme to help border residents' TV sets get better DD signals, which being weak in border areas get "overpowered" by Pakistani TV signals. "A proposal has also been approved to erect mobile phone network towers in border areas for the benefit of mobile and internet systems," the minister said.

The minister also referred to the (Jammu and Kashmir Reservation (Amendment) Bill, 2019, introduced Friday in Parliament for providing three percent reservation in government jobs and educational institutions to citizens living along the International Border. The earlier governments had discriminated in granting this reservation only to the people living along the Line of Control, said Singh, referring to the provisions of the Bill. "It is a healthy change, which is taking some time to find a place in the  mindset of the people because of the several decades of injustice suffered by them," said Singh.

Referring to persistence of negative attitude among people due to consistence indiscrimination, the minister said he could sense the cynicism when some people tried, though in vain, to rake up an allegation that free DD set-top boxes, meant for border area people, were distributed to people in Srinagar. In today's hi-tech information technology age, he said, people are expected to know that the new state-level official schemes have to be launched by the governor who is presently operating from the state's summer capital Srinagar.

But, the large number of beneficiaries who received the free set-top boxes on June 22 function at SKICC Srinagar were the people living along the IB and LoC sectors of Kathua and Rajouri districts of the Jammu region. Singh also thanked the Modi government for accepting the long-pending demand for a satellite Doordarshan channel for Dogri news and Dogri programmes. "This had been a demand from Jammu for several decades but the successive governments in the past never paid attention to it because of their different priorities," he said, adding the daily Dogri programme is available now on Doordarshan satellite channel from June 22 after 6 pm in the evening and gradually the time slot would increase.

"We will finally have an exclusive 24 hours Dogri channel through satellite Doordarshan," he said. Taking a dig at the critics, Singh also asked where are those self-styled activists who have always been clamouring for Dogra pride but were hesitant in acknowledging and lauding the Modi government for giving Dogri a satellite slot on Doordarshan for the first time in history. "Sometimes one tends to suspect that some of these fake activists are actually not keen to achieve the objectives but are more interested in the objectives not being achieved, so that they can carry on with their self-styled activism," he said.

Lamenting the lack of growth of Dogri language in educational institutions, the Union minister attributed it to lack of both the teachers as well as students willing to opt the language as their medium of instruction. "Will those who cry horse over the lack of growth of Dogri make a commitment to have the language as the medium of instruction for their own sons and daughters at both the high school as well as 10+2 levels and refuse to go in for the English or Hindi medium?" asked the minister.