J&K Governor NN Vohra has rolled out major reforms in the State during his two-month rule while keeping the administration on toes to fast-track decision-making on issues concerning public—something which the elected governments failed to do in their tenures.
In a significant move, the Governor-headed State Administrative Council (SAC) last month cleared disbursement of financial assistance to Kashmir’s flood victims that was pending for more than a year and had brought the PDP-BJP coalition under fire.
The move was followed by the SAC’s clearance to increase in allocation of food grains to people following growing protests in the Valley against the National Food Security Act and attempts by some residents in border villages of north Kashmir to cross the Line of Control to procure food grains from Pakistan Administered Kashmir (PaK). As per the revised policy, each person in the Below Poverty Line (BPL) and Priority Sector Households are now entitled to seven-kg food grains against five-kg, from April 1.
The dredging of river Jhelum picked up after the Governor flew from Jammu to Srinagar on two occasions to take a spot review of the work. It was the Governor’s administration that hired a Kolkata-based firm for undertaking dredging of the river whose carrying capacity had drastically gone down owing to siltation after the devastating deluge of September 2014.
The SAC also initiated the process for implementing Rs 80000-crore ‘developmental’ package announced by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the State during his visit to the Valley last November.
“We have a very sensitive Governor who is determined to do right things and wants us as well to take the right decisions,” said ParvezDewan, advisor to Governor, who is in-charge of various departments like Health, Education, Tourism and Roads and Buildings.
On last Thursday, a meeting between Governor and top army commanders in Jammu agreed that the force would vacate Toto Ground at Batamaloo here and land in some other areas under their possession in different districts of Kashmir and Jammu—a key decision taken by Chief Minister headed Civil-Military Liaison Conference in September last year, but which hadn’t witnessed much progress since.
On the same day, the Governor’s office stepped in to see an early end to the problems of Solid-Waste Management in Srinagar which has been stinking for past few weeks as the Srinagar Municipal Corporation failed to remove garbage from city roads in the wake of a deadlock with residents of Achan–the place where the garbage is dumped.
In fact, most of the decisions that have been cleared ever since the Governor took over the reins of the State were hanging fire for the past more than a year and had hurt the image of the previous PDP-led Government.
“Most of the issues which would have handed over an advantage to PDP and BJP stand resolved under the Governor’s rule now. This swift decision-making has of course put pressure on both the parties who could have gained politically by resolving these under their rule,” said a known political analyst.
The decision-making has been spontaneous across the board under the supervision of Vohra, according to officials.
In the Health sector, the SAC ordered termination of services of 100 doctors who had unauthorizedly remained absent for years, to pave way for advertisement of these posts. This was followed with clearing the Free Drug Policy and amendments to the J&K Medical Education (Gazetted) Service Recruitment Rules to conform to Medical Council of India norms. The previous regimes had failed to taken a decision on the absentee doctors despite sending them the “last notice” on many occasions.
Much to the relief of J&K citizens including educated unemployed youth, the Governor approved the much required self-attestation policy that won’t require people to run after gazetted officers to get their documents attested. Besides the SAC ordered detachment of hundreds of teachers who had got themselves attached in different offices.
The new media advertisement policy and the industrial policy-2016 are among other swift decisions taken by the Governor apart from effecting reshuffle in the police and state administration to “bring vibrancy in the system.”
“The decisions taken by the Governor apart, the state administration seems to have woken up after a deep slumber,” said an official.
