Srinagar under NC is developing into a slum: PDP

Expressing disappointment over the plight of Srinagar city and its inhabitants,

Srinagar, Dec 2 ::: People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Friday accused the National Conference led government of turning the historic city into the world’s fastest developing slum.  

In a Party communiqué, the chief spokesman Naeem Akhter accused the NC led coalition of worsening economic, political and infrastructure condition of the capital city. “Srinagar is turning into world’s fastest growing slum because of government neglect while the ruling national conference doles out the haphazardly conceived works to its cadre in the name of development only to provide them monetary benefits.”

Akhter said the misfortune of Srinagar was the result of the lack of any vision for the city in any National conference led dispensation. That is why the city now looks centuries behind its counterparts in other states, he said. “The National Conference has unfortunately taken Srinagar for granted and does not feel accountable to its residents as its leaders from the city know they are only beneficiaries of boycott politics and are not even raising the huge issues of development this city faces, remarked Akhtar.”

He said had that not been so, the eight MLAs and a Member of Parliament from Srinagar would not have allowed Rs 48 crores to be diverted from the city roads last year under the Central Road Fund (CRF). “This atrocity was committed on the city with the approval of the chief minister Omar Abdullah who also holds the planning and R&B portfolios and belongs to Srinagar” added Akhter.

The Spokesman said the city has stopped growing as a modern urban centre that is becoming home to numerous new entrants from rural areas and is also playing host to over a million tourists. The infrastructure remaining stagnant, life is becoming impossible for commuters as traffic snarls take hours to cover only a few kilometres. He said the shelving of the IDB funded flyovers has frozen road expansion in the city with more and more bottlenecks being added to the system. “Unfortunately the chicken brained NC leaders mistake blacktopping of a few kilometres of road as modernization and development not realizing how cities in today’s world are being developed” Akhtar said. This is in spite of the fact that the chief minister and his senior ministers are frequent travellers outside the state and country and they never bring back any modern ideas to relieve their people of increasing commutation troubles, Akhtar regretted.

Referring to the two major bottlenecks at the entry points of Pantachhok and Shalteng, Akhtar said these have made journey to and from the city a nightmare for everyone. He said even after seven years the four laning of Srinagar Narbal road is nowhere near completion even though now even that might fall short of requirements. Similarly, the Pantchhok entry point is nobody’s business in the government even though the locals and tourists have to spend hours in negotiating it.

Akhtar said unless the government puts its act together in Srinagar and deals the city and its development with the seriousness and respect they deserve, quality of life for its people would continue to degrade. He said even if the government only picked up the threads from where the previous government had left it and continued to work on projects started by it, the people could feel a difference.

Instead of taking new initiatives towards the betterment of civic amenities in Srinagar, the present government has in fact failed to build on the initiatives taken by the previous PDP-led coalition government for the betterment of the city, he added."People are getting punished for having a government that has earned highest disapproval rates in the history of the state for its inefficient performance," he said.