Meghalaya Guv Satya Pal Malik’s claim about me being Roshni Act beneficiary false: Mehbooba Mufti

PDP president Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday asked Meghalaya Governor Satya Pal Malik to withdraw his purported comments that the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister was a beneficiary of now-abandoned Roshni scheme, failing which legal action will be taken against him. “False & unsavoury utterances of Satya Pal Malik about me being a beneficiary of Roshni Act is highly mischievous. My legal team is preparing to sue him. He has the option to withdraw his comments, failing which I will pursue legal recourse,” Mehbooba said in a tweet.

Mehbooba shared a video in which Malik, who was the last Governor of Jammu and Kashmir state, is purportedly seen claiming that National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah, his son Omar Abdullah and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mufti has got plots of land under the Roshni scheme.

The Roshni Act was brought in by the Farooq Abdullah government with the aim of granting proprietary rights to occupants of state land in lieu of charges. The money thus generated was to be used for setting up hydroelectric power plants in the erstwhile state.

However, the scheme was disbanded after Jammu and Kashmir High Court declared it illegal and directed the CBI to investigate the beneficiaries of the scheme.

It has emerged that proprietary rights to bulk of the state land (nearly 28,500 hectares) was given in the Jammu division, while proprietary rights were transferred to the occupants in Kashmir only on six per cent (1,700 hectares) of the land.