Accusing the “Roshni scamsters” and “land grabbers” of opposing the new land law of Jammu and Kashmir, Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said today that the new land law is not against the common man or the poor, “but against the mafia members of politician-administration nexus who have been for over half a century, constructing huge mansions, bunglows and commercial complexes on unauthorized land” he said.
“It is precisely for this reason that all these habitual law breakers have ganged up to spread a disinformation campaign against the land law which has been implemented as per the provisions of the constitution of India” Dr Jitendra said.
Addressing meetings during the District Development Council election campaign in Chennai area, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, the new land law will check Roshni like scams and illegal land grabbing in future.
He said, most of the cases of illegal occupation of land and illegal constructions were carried out during the National Conference-Congress and PDP-Congress governments, and its beneficiaries include high profile Ministers and bureaucrats from Kashmir as well as some of the then Ministers from the Jammu region who are now trying to deviate attention from their unlawful activities by crying hoarse for the cause of Jammu.
It is interesting to see, said Dr. Jitendra Singh, that some of these former ministers had always been demanding CBI inquiry even for insignificant cases but when the CBI has taken up the cases of land grabbing, unauthorised land use and unauthorized land purchase against the same persons, they have started objecting to the investigation.
He said, as former Ministers, Chief Ministers and senior officials, the minimum they could do to establish their credibility and propriety is to cooperate with the CBI and prove their innocence.
Hitting hard at the reports of MGNREGA payments having been stopped, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, the matter of fact is that the payment has been stopped for the agents who were acting as middlemen and taking away all the MGNREGA funds. Under the instructions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, a foolproof method has been developed of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to the bank accounts of the MGNREGA workers so that the middlemen do not exploit them. This change – over to the new mode of payment, which also included opening of bank accounts for some of the MNREGA workers may have caused some delay but the middlemen and the agents will not be allowed to take even a single penny from the MGNREGA amount.
Taking a dig at the opposition, Dr. Jitendra Singh said, the land at Mantalai was given to Dhirendra Brahmachari on the instructions of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi but for 35 years after the death of Dhirendra Brahamchari, Congress leaders who otherwise claim to be Indira Gandhi’s followers left that land undeveloped and it is only now that the Modi government allocated Rs 100 crore to develop this place as a state-of-the-art, world-class Yoga-cum-Wellness Centre with all the modern facilities.
