The Union Government has decided to regularly monitor the progress of centrally-sponsored schemes, especially the Prime Minister’s Reconstruction Plan (PMRP), in Jammu and Kashmir. As part of this monitoring process, a high-level Central team headed by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrashekhar had last week reviewed various development projects.

“The Cabinet Secretary will visit the state again in February to review the progress of the projects,” Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said on Thursday. “This will be followed by visits from secretaries of all departments,” he added. Chidambaram said the Union secretaries would also be going to the field to review progress along with the state secretary of that particular department. Chidambaram had censured the state government for its failure to utilise the Prime Minister’s Reconstruction Plan package, whose deadline ended in March 2009. State Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather had in August said the state had failed to utilise 78 per cent of these funds.

Meanwhile, Peoples Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti welcomed Chidambaram’s statement on resolution of the Kashmir issue, calling it a “breath of fresh air into a scenario marred by negative rhetoric for a long while”. In a statement issued here, Mehbooba said the commitment of the Union Government to work for a peaceful resolution of the imbroglio adds a new and positive dimension to Kashmir discourse.

Mehbooba said Chidambaram could not be more accurate when he said J&K would need its own solution in view of the peculiar background of its problems. She said PDP’s self-rule vision takes these factors into consideration and provides a solution to external and internal problems, aiming at the virtual unification of the pre-partition state of J&K, without impinging on the territorial integrity and sovereignty of either India or Pakistan.

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