Srinagar’s Mayor and Deputy Mayor have been caught in a war of words over cleaning the famous Dal Lake even as the parts of the water body froze in the cold wave sweeping through Kashmir.
On 23 December, Deputy Mayor Sheikh Mohammed Imran tweeted that he had begun a 21-day cleaning drive of the lake along with members of the public, the municipal corporation, the Lakes and Waterways Development Authority and the army.
In another tweet Imran thanked the Army for volunteering to clean up Dal lake on his “request”.
However, this did not go down well with Mayor Junaid Azim Mattu, who took to Twitter two days later to point out that the army was not needed in civic matters.
Responding to a news report on the drive to clean Dal Lake Mattu said, “SMC has not entered into any collaborative operation with the Army for any cleaning, de-weeding operations in Dal.”
When a Twitter user said that using the army to do civic work would “tarnish” the image of Kashmir, Mattu pointed out that it was not the job of the army to clean weeds out of a lake.
The difference of opinion on a public platform between the mayor and the deputy mayor perhaps indicated a rift between the two.
While Mattu is backed by Sajad Lone-led People’s Conference, Imran is backed by the Congress.
Commenting on the spat, Defence spokesperson Col Rajesh Kalia told The Indian Express that the army had been approached by the state administration to help with the cleaning drive.
“A joint task force of Army, Land and Waterways Development Authority (LAWDA) and Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) is presently working towards this mission and is currently sharing the technical expertise and infrastructure available with them for the same,” the spokesperson said.