Terming corruption as a scourge which eats up the vitals of the society, Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti today asked the officers to support her in the initiative of providing a responsive and responsible administration to the people of the State.Chairing a meeting of Deputy Commissioners of Jammu province here, the Chief Minister sought the support of officers in field to ensure a clean, prompt and result oriented governance to people, particularly those living in far off, hilly and disadvantageous areas of the State. “All alone I cannot do anything, your role is critical in providing an honest and responsive administration to people”, she told the participants in the meeting.Deputy Chief Minister, Dr. Nirmal Singh was also present in the meeting.Complimenting the Deputy Commissioners of the region for discharging their duties with maturity and maintaining peace and communal amity in their areas, Mehbooba Mufti asked them to continue with the tempo. To improve the imprints of governance, she asked them to further enhance their public outreach and conduct periodic visits to forward and far flung areas to know the difficulties of people there. She also asked the DCs to specify one day in a week for meeting people in their offices and redress their grievances on spot.
The Chief Minister, however, cautioned the DCs against harassing any community or group in the drive against encroachments or protection of forest areas. She asked them to handle such issues compassionately while enforcing law. Also, she said, law must be enforced on equal terms while dealing with cases of bovine smuggling or cow vigilantism. She directed the DCs to be strictly tough with the elements that are found indulging in sowing seeds of hatred among communities and people.Mehbooba Mufti asked the DCs to start working on approaching winter months and ensure stocking of essential supplies and fuel at areas which generally remain cut off due to snow. She also took a detailed feedback regarding the arrangements made by various District administrations for the people dislocated due to shelling in border areas of the province.The Chief Minister asked the Divisional administration to ensure that the farmers of Basmati rice whose lands are to be acquired for Jammu semi ring road project be adequately compensated. She also asked for rationalization of teachers in the province so that adequate number of teachers conversant with teaching of Punjabi and Dogri languages is made available in schools.
Mehbooba Mufti directed installation of crash barriers on priority on the Ramban-Banihal stretch of National Highway to avoid frequency of accidents.The Chief Minister took a detailed review of the pace of work on the three medical colleges coming up at Rajouri, Doda and Kathua and AIIMS at Vijaypur. She also reviewed progress on projects like Jammu-Akhnoor road widening, Jammu airport expansion, Tawi barrage, new Assembly complex at Jammu, Dental College, Jammu, Mubarak Mandi Heritage project, Suchetgarh border tourism project, Chenab water supply scheme, Solid waste management project at Kote Balwal, railway projects, National Highway expansion and other projects.Mehbooba Mufti asked the Deputy Commissioners to personally supervise the completion of these projects within the time schedule and ensure that in no way should the delays in the completion of these projects be incentivized. She asked them to ensure compliance and execution of PSGA in the service delivery by various Departments in their Districts. She also asked the DCs to make the Grievance Cells in their offices properly functional and make sure that no complaint from people goes unanswered.Earlier, Divisional Commissioner, Jammu, Dr. M. K. Bhandari gave a resume of developmental activities in the province.Advisor-Infrastructure, Pradip Singh; Chief Secretary, B. B. Vyas; Principal Secretary to Chief Minister, Rohit Kansal; and Deputy Commissioners of all the districts of Jammu province were present in the meeting.