Omar takes jibe at Govt for very low internet speed in J&K, says ‘it makes for great ad slogan’

Srinagar, Jan 24: Taking a jibe at the government over very low speed internet in J&K, former chief minister and National Conference (NC) Vice President Omar Abdullah on Sunday said ‘come invest in J&K, we have the slowest internet in the county’ makes for a great advertising slogan.

Mr Abdullah was reacting to a report, according to which J&K features at the bottom with lowest internet speed of 0.8 Mbps while Telangana tops that chat with 16.1 Mbps speed in the country.

“I almost didn’t see J&K because the average mobile Internet speed is so slow it barely makes a mark. Makes for a great advertising slogan – ‘come invest in J&K, we have the slowest internet in the country’,” Mr Abdullah wrote on micro-blogging site twitter.

Meanwhile, the NC expressed dismay over the adoption of Jammu and Kashmir Industrial Land Allotment Policy, 2021-30 by the incumbent administration, saying such policy decisions should have been left for the popular state government to approve following the restoration of August 4 position.

Expressing dismay over the new industrial land allotment policy, NC’s Member of Parliament from Anantnag Hassnain Masoodi said such policy decisions should have been left to a popular government to decide upon on account of its long term bearing on the industrial outlook of J&K.

A coterie of bureaucrats, he said cannot replace a vital and vibrant legislature, where such pros and cons of such policy decisions are deliberated upon by people’s representatives taking into account its impact on environment, housing and agriculture land usage.

“Such decisions cannot be decided by unrelated bureaucracy. Such a process, in a democratic set up is initiated by taking counsel from people associated with small and large scale industries. Thereafter the bill is discussed in the cabinet and then tabled in the legislature for further discussions. In this case the entire process has been skipped. Having a coterie of bureaucrats decide on vital issues of a culturally, and topographically diverse region like that of ours is in itself an irony,” he added.

Industrial Development Scheme is meaningless in absence of peace initiative, Masoodi said, adding recently announced Rs 28,400 crore Industrial Scheme would not fetch any results in absence of an aggressive peace initiative to address the political aspirations of the people of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh.

Masoodi has reminded the Government that earlier such announcements - Rs 6165 crore package announced by Late Prime Minister Vajpayee in 2002 and Rs 80,000 crore package announced by Prime Minister Modi in 2015, have not changed anything on ground. The alienation, despite such announcements, has been ever increasing and that the unconstitutional measures of August 5, 2019, nothing less than a misadventure, have further widened the gulf.

He said if official statistics of 2020 is any indicator hundreds of lives have been lost in about a hundred encounters, quite a few in urban areas of Srinagar and Jammu; that the Government does not even, one and a half years after assault on the special status of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, muster courage to restore the Internet at the speed available in other parts of the Country exposing millions of students and businessmen to immense loss and inconvenience.

“The preventive detention law, an anathema to the Constitution, continues to be invoked with impunity and young and old detained hundreds of miles away from their homes,” he added.