Srinagar: Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry ( KCCI) along with its Jammu counterpart, Jammu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) on Saturday asserted that power projects whose agreements have expired, must be returned immediately by the Government of India to the state government.
Addressing a joint press conference in Srinagar, Nasir Hamid Khan, Senior Vice President, KCCI hit out at Union Power Minister R K Singh, for his recent remarks in which he had said that “no power projects will be returned to the state”.
Khan said return of power projects is a long-pending demand of people in the state apart from being a part of the Agenda of Alliance of the PDP-BJP government.
“We respectfully submit that Jammu and Kashmir, because of its unique constitutional position can never be compared to Uttar Pradesh or any other state of the country. We have reason to believe that our resources have been exploited and would simply like to have our losses quantified and compensated,” he said.
Rakesh Gupta, president, JCCI said the chambers have decided to “logically convince” the state government and pressurize it to raise the issue of return of power projects with the central government.
“We have been demanding return of power projects for a long time. From 1947 to 2017, it’s been 70 years and that is an era. Won’t the central government let us stand on our feet?” he asked.
Gupta said that the chambers will issue a joint statement on Article 35-A and GST.
“We have said it earlier also that until we don’t build a consensus on these issues we won’t comment but Jammu chamber is equally concerned ( on these issues) and we will come out with a joint statement as soon consensus is achieved,” Gupta said.
