Governor to parties: you have no right to dictate India on talks with Pakistan

Srinagar, Oct 24: Governor, Satya Pal Malik, on Wednesday said the local political parties in the state “have no right to dictate when to hold talks” with Pakistan.

“No one has a right to dictate to us to hold dialogue with Pakistan; that is our prerogative. We will definitely hold talks with them once things will get normalised in Kashmir,” Malik said, while inaugurating Sri Pratab Singh (SPS) Library here.

He said prior to Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s visit to Kashmir, he had asked the mainstream political parties to take part in the upcoming panchayat elections.

“This process is for them and they shall take part in the process,” he said, hoping that panchayat elections would culminate “peacefully” as well.

“Every elected Panchayat is allotted Rs 50 lakh to 1.5 crore,” said Malik

Earlier, the governor inaugurated the largest public library in Kashmir, which had been waiting availability of some higher official since May to be thrown open.

The governor talked about the importance of the public library, saying that smartphones impacted the book-reading culture.

He said an initiative should be taken to create a mobile library for women, so that the library could reach to them as they don’t have much time to visit public libraries.

The SPS library is spread over 55,000 square feet and was completed with an estimated cost of Rs 32 crore.

The six-floor library’s eye-catching structure houses as many as 90,000 books on varied subjects.

The library has an art gallery, auditorium, fire-proof blocks for manuscripts, exhibition hall, and a cafeteria.