From the story of Ali Baba Chalees Chor
The State Land Grabbers – IV
If one goes deep into the Roshni Scam, one may find its perfect setting in our childhood comic story from Arabian Nights and also in the script of famous feature film- ‘Ali Baba Chalees Chor.'
Ghulam Nabi Azad, the then chief minister in reincarnation of ‘Ali Baba' knowing well that nothing works straight in Jammu and Kashmir, dreamed one fine morning that the Darkness in the state could only be enlightened by Roshni Scam. One fine morning, he woke up and came close to gigantic rocky land-scape shouting ‘Khul Ja Sim Sim'. The doors opened and five hundred forty three ‘……….' entered in and got legitimised their already looted possessions turning into their property with absolute titles.
In our special status state, graft has achieved the status of a craft. But one cannot also help wondering if all of us, indignant multitudes, ourselves are prone to dipping into pockets other than ours as a habit. While this could be true of humanity as a whole, Indians particularly people in Jammu Kashmir seem to have nerves of ‘steal'!
The Northlines has, in its possession, a long list of test cases examined and audited by the CAG units that contains many big names of top political figures in and out of government, serving and retired bureaucrats, top businessmen who possessed the state land and availed huge incentive worth crores of rupees on their act of grabbing state land.
The Roshni Scheme stands challenged before the JK High Court without much progress due to non-cooperative attitude of the District Administration. Further the scheme being already under scrutiny of Public Accounts Committee of Legislature and progressing too at snail's pace indicates that people will have to wait at least till 2022 to know about the truth. (To be continued)
