Senior PDP leader and MP designate Tariq Hameed Karra today said that his party’s agenda is to carve out a new and stable economic and financial structure for Jammu and Kashmir with full control over its natural resources. “The state’s political leadership has to rise to prevent brazen exploitation of its water and natural resources as our future generations would ask us why we couldn’t prevent our resources from getting vandalized,” Karra said while addressing a series of thanksgiving public meetings in Kangan Assembly segment of Srinagar-Budgam Parliamentary constituency wherefrom he was elected to the Lok Sabha by defeating National Conference president and former Union Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah.
According to a statement issued, Karra said the state’s rich natural resources have sustained it throughout the 5000 years of its recorded history. “There is no reason why we should have found ourselves to be a basket-case perceived to be surviving on doles despite having the right mix of brilliant entrepreneurship and a sustainable resource base,” he said and added that PDP’s effort would be to restore JK’s economic glory by introducing a new policy of self-sustenance and doing away with the deliberate attempt to convert Kashmir into a daily-wager society. Karra said PDP would ensure that JK’s enterprising young men and women have broad range of opportunities so that they can get the real chance to find decent and productive employment. “Kashmir’s young population has suffered immensely due to the conflict and our youth need to connect with the larger world outside to catch hold of the opportunities available to their counterparts elsewhere,” he said and added J&K has to have physical connectivity, economic connectivity and knowledge connectivity with the world outside. Expressing gratitude to the people for endorsing, with a decisive mandate, PDP’s agenda of peace, stability and prosperity, Karra said the party would strive towards according the people’s institutions their rightful place.
Cautioning the State Government against furthering the personal agenda of its functionaries on its last leg, Karra said while the Government’s self-introspection move, after the Lok Sabha poll results, was a welcome step, but there are reports that the political executive has started pressurizing the officers to clear various contentious proposals involving the interests of various government functionaries and their families. “It seems the functionaries the present government have not learnt any lessons from the recent poll results and they continue to misuse their positions to further personal and material interests,” he said. Senior PDP leaders Qazi Muhammad Afzal, Bashir Ahmad Mir, Mohammad Shaban, Mustaq Ahmad and A R Shaheen also addressed the public meetings.