NC’s politicking over PAO roll back

As usual the National Conference has started painting political colour to the government’s decision to roll back the implementation of PAO(Pay & Accounts Office) System irrespective of the fact that decision to put in the abeyance the measure adopted by the state assembly was necessitated by the continuing lock down of the engineering departments by thousands of contractors across the state. The surprising and condemnable attempt of the National Conference to link the deferment of PAO system with the sacking of Haseeb Drabu as Finance Minister speaks volumes about the tendencies of National Conference leaders to play politics over an issue concerning the working in engineering departments directly connection with the development of the state. Since the deferment of PAO system till March 31 has been taken in view of the hard pressed demands of the contractors to end the liabilities of previous years to facilitate the new system of payments from next financial year beginning April this year, the National Conference should not have tried to play politics over the issue just to try to block the clearance of the liabilities of the previous before March end this year. Even if Haseeb Drabu would have been the finance minister even the chief minister could have directed him also to defer the PAO system for 15 days and as such even naives can understand that Chief Minister won’t have been prompted to sack one of her senior ministers over this issue . In fact efforts were already underway as the Chief Minister had held several rounds of meeting with the representatives of thousands of agitating contractors over the issue both in Srinagar and Jammu and at least two orders in this connection were also issued from the Chief Minister’s office even before the sacking of Haseeb Drabu as Finance Minister of the state.
Saying that deferment of the PAO system is an attempt to benefit some individuals or bule eyed people towards the march end is just an illusory contention as not hundred but thousands of contractors are likely to be benefited by this decision across the state. Ironically former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah presently leader of the main opposition National Conference in the assembly has sought the intervention of the Central government over the decision of the state government on deferment of PAO system just for 15 days with the argument that the implementation of the new payment system mandated by the assembly can’t be put on hold by a simple administrative order. Questions could be asked that had Omar Abdullah himself been the Chief Minister then what decision he would take to deal with the demand of thousands of contractor for deferment of PAO system to clear the pending liabilities of previous years. Shocking it is that former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his other party leaders did not bother to utter even a single word over the demands of the agitating contractors who had locked down almost all the main offices of the engineering departments for last fifteen days but they are now raising questions over a decision which the government has taken to resolve a deepening crisis in the engineering departments.