The infighting that has been eating into the Congress party in Jammu and Kashmir for quite some time now grew worse with a senior party leader publicly seeking to implicate another, who is a minister in the National Conference-Congress coalition government, in cases of bribery and fraud and the latter threatening to sue him.
Former minister and senior Jammu and Kashmir PCC leader Abdul Gani Vakil had a few days ago publicly accused his party colleague and minister for public health engineering Taj Mohiuddin of turning a blind eye towards incidence of corruption and malpractice in departments under him and even himself being involved in questionable acts. Mr Taj strongly denied the charges and threatened to file a defamation case in court against Mr Vakil.
On Saturday, Mr Vakil chose to release to media a letter he has written to Mr Taj and copies of which have been sent to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Mohan Prakash, its In-charge Jammu and Kashmir affairs. It not only repeats the charges against Mr Taj but ridicules his threat to sue Mr Vakil. The letter begins with saying, “It is quite disheartening that you have threatened me, a senior colleague of yours, to take to court for defamation as I have demanded a thorough probe into the alleged bungling and financial mismanagement in your department going on for the past many years right under your nose.”
The letter alleges that in spite of revelations of so many scams and financial mismanagement published in various newspapers and also brought into the minister’s notice from time to time, “You have chosen to maintain a criminal silence which speaks of your irresponsive attitude and lack of will to fight corrupt practices rampant in your department.”
The letter accuses Mr Taj of turning a blind eye towards “brazen loot of public money.”