Nothing new in it that a politician like Sajad Gani Lone collaborating with parties in power or parties qualifying to be contenders for power tends to be a critic of outgoing Chief Secretary B V R Subrahmanyam but what is new in Lone’s aggressive critical remarks against the outgoing Chief Secretary is his abortive attempt to draw political mileages from his anti-Subrahmanyam remarks. Interestingly Lone has become critic of an approved man of a Prime Minister who politically empowered him more aggressively than the outgoing chief secretary. Had Prime Minister Narendra Modi not brought Sajad Lone into erstwhile PDP-BJP coalition ministry as a full fledged minister on BJP quota he won’t even dream of becoming a minister keeping in view the intensity of his animosity with late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and whole lot of PDP top brass before his induction into erstwhile PDP-BJP coalition ministry but on the contrary Subrahmanyam would have been other also a Chief Secretary of Chatisgarrah if not of Jammu & Kashmir as he belonged to the country’s elite service which gives him the right to go up in the ladder as per seniority and performance. In fact B V R Subrahmanyam has proved himself competent enough to brilliantly occupy the space vacated by the whole lot of mainstream leadership including the likes of Abdullahs’ and Muftis’.
Trespassing into politician domain is not a crime if the controlling political authority wants a careerist bureaucrat to do so in the larger interests of institutional functioning but collaboration of any politician with parties for ministerial berths or control over panchayat bodies in total disregard to basic benchmarks of political conscience is by all standards of understandabilities an insult to the institution of public representation and democracy at large.
Unfortunately Sajad was part of a government which humiliated two illustrious local bureaucrats of Jammu & Kashmir Mohammad Iqbal Khanday and B R Sharma but B V R Subrahmanyam was part of the government which brought Sharma a top local bureaucrat back to Jammu & Kashmir with full honour and dignity to head a top recruitment body called J&K Public Service Commission. As far as the development at grass roots is concerned the outgoing Chief Secretary proved it by dint of his actions that he could reach out to people at the grass roots in villages by embarking on a massive public reach out program under “Back to Village” program and this is what Sajad Lone as minister of erstwhile PDP-BJP coalition government could not do by conducting “public darbars” at district headquarters mostly presided over by the then Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti herself . Records themselves speak about an effective monitoring system pursued in the execution of all the development projects taken up under “Back to Village” program under the leadership of the outgoing Chief Secretary B V R Subrahmanyam but records also speak about the poor execution of social welfare schemes under the leadership of Sajad Lone. At least the outgoing Chief Secretary like many mainstream political stalwarts did not approve backdoor appointments in government departments, autonomous bodies and public sector undertakings (PSUs) during his three year long stay in Jammu & Kashmir. People in media wonder that why Sajad Gani Lone did not Lone break his silence when the outgoing Chief Secretary in one of his statements called erstwhile Jammu & Kashmir state “a broken state” and even minced no words in saying that J&K Bank is not a charitable institution where politicians could be given a license to recruit people through “backdoor” at their own whims and wishes without following the proper selection procedure. May be that Subrahmanyam would have preferred to relinquish the top position in the J&K Government after proposed actions against the beneficiaries of the controversial “ Roshni” land scam were put on hold by the government . Trespassing into politician domain is not a crime if the controlling political authority wants a careerist bureaucrat to do so in the larger interests of institutional functioning but collaboration of any politician with parties for ministerial berths or control over panchayat bodies in total disregard to basic benchmarks of political conscience is by all standards of understandabilities an insult to the institution of public representation and democracy at large. Top political veteran Muzaffar Hussain Beig and now a political mentor of Sajad Lone endorsing or rejecting his view on the role of B V R Subrahmanyam would finally sent out a message about the presence of an atmosphere of political harmony within the ranks of People’s Conference. Hope history is kind enough to remember both Sajad Lone and as well B V R Subrahmanyam for their actions and not words as the undisputed fact remain that actions speak louder than words and surely history will remember both Lone and Subrahmanyam for their actions not words.
