Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Dec 1: Peoples Conference Chairman and MLA Handwara Sajad Lone today launched a blistering attack on the NC-led Government declaring it as an “existential threat to Kashmiris.”
Lone also renewed his call for restoring district-level recruitment for non-gazetted posts and divisional recruitment for gazetted posts.
Reiterating his long-standing position, Lone said the only credible safeguard for fairness in appointments lay in reinstating the previous recruitment structure.
“A bull does not become king by walking into a palace; it is the palace that becomes a barn,” he said in a statement issued here. He recalled that he had already warned of the fallout of any policy overhaul.
“Mark my words. If any report is released by the current Government, the Kashmiri-speaking population will take a hit yet again,” he said.
Lone’s remarks came in the backdrop of reports hinting at possible changes in the Union Territory’s reservation framework.
Responding sharply to the developments, he said he had “no idea whether to believe the reports about reservations,” but the very apprehensions he voiced months ago now appeared to be unfolding.
Recalling his July 3 “warning”, Lone said he had long feared that “whatever changes, if any, are made will come at the cost of the Kashmiri-speaking population.”
He asserted that even the BJP, during its tenure, refrained from tampering with the Reserved Backward Area category.
“What the BJP did not dare do to Kashmiris, it seems, if the reports are true, the NC has now done.”
Accusing the National Conference of reverting to its traditional role, Lone said, “They have historically acted as the errand boys in every fixed match between Delhi and Srinagar.”
He dismissed arguments that some provisions could not be altered because they originated in Parliament.
“What is this fallacious claim that ST has been decided by Parliament and hence cannot be changed? The 60-40 ratio between reserved and open merit is itself a by-product of that decision. By that logic, nothing can ever be changed,” he said.
Lone said the issue was not legal impossibility but political unwillingness. “The reality staring us in the face is that you can change anything and everything. But you choose not to. You hide behind falsehood, lies and deception.”
Warning that the administration was pushing J&K towards deeper “instability”, Lone said the Government “will go down in history with the odium and contempt it deserves,” accusing it of turning “every stone it can to engineer a societal disaster of unimaginable proportions.”
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