Srinagar, May 01: People’s Conference President Sajad Gani Lone on Wednesday claimed that 50 percent of the Over Ground Worker (OGW) lists in Kashmir are the result of political rivalry.
Addressing a press conference in Baramulla after filing his nomination form for the Baramulla parliamentary constituency, Lone said he is among the people of Kashmir who have been “tortured, jailed and intimidated” by the National Conference government.
“Between 1996 and 2002, around 7,000 innocent people died in Kashmir, and the party (NC), which currently claims to be the true voice of the Kashmiri people, was in power during this period,” he said.
Sajad said, “From 2010 to 2014, hundreds of young people were killed by the NC government, and they seem to believe that those who were killed were not born in Kashmir. NC introduced PSA, POTA and other draconian laws to Kashmir, and the common people are very aware of that. The hands of the National Conference are full of blood, and people won’t forget them.”
He said that in the past, 90 percent of the Members of Parliament were sent by the National Conference, and they failed to bring any projects here that could benefit the young people of Kashmir. Instead, they killed them or sent them to jail on false charges, he alleged.
The PC chief added, “I challenge the security establishment that 50 per cent of OGWs are on the list due to political rivalry. It was NC leaders who were deciding whom to book on the OGW list and whom to book under PSA. They never speak about police verification because they are the people who did this during their tenure. They won’t speak against it because they are the ones who brought it to the Kashmir Valley for their vested interests.”
“If any member of any family has committed any wrongful deeds, the whole family is denied passports and government jobs, and the NC has never spoken against it. I will raise these questions in parliament; I will seek the same rules in Kashmir that others enjoy in the rest of the country. In the rest of the country, police verification of a person is carried out, but in Kashmir, the whole family is being verified for an individual’s verification,” Lone said.
