‘India wants to keep Kashmiris away from self-reliance’

All Parties Hurriyet Conference Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has said that India is continuing with its long-standing policy to keep the Kashmiris from achieving self-reliance.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the APHC Chairman in a media interview in Srinagar expressed serious concern over the deepening power crisis in the territory.
He said that it was the height of mockery that the Kashmiris were deprived of power generated from their own resources. “New Delhi wants the Kashmiris always to have begging bowls in their hands,” he said.
The Mirwaiz castigated the puppet Chief Minister, Omar Farooq for labeling the Kashmiris as power thieves and said that the puppet administration had failed to wrest power projects back from the Indian National Hydro Power Company.
He pointed out that international agencies, including the World Bank, had been deliberately spurned on offers in the nineties to invest in hydel generation plants in the occupied territory.
On the other hand, the forum patronized by the veteran Kashmiri Hurriyet leader, Syed Ali Gilani, in a statement said that the power crisis in the territory was due to the Indian occupation.
It said that had Jammu and Kashmir not been under Indian occupation, all its water resources would have been harnessed. “This would not only have been a major foreign exchange earner for the territory, but like some developed countries we also would have been in a position to provide free-of-cost power to our people,” it added.