Funding of separatist leaders serious: Congress

New Delhi, May 19 (IANS) The Congress on Friday termed the funding of key separatist leaders by Pakistan-based terrorist groups "extremely serious" and blamed the government for doing little to restore normalcy in the Kashmir Valley.

"It is an extremely serious issue and deserves the strongest action in the shortest possible time and in the most effective manner," Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters here.

"This undermines national security directly and completely," he said.

The National Incvestigation Agency (NIA) on Friday said it had registered a case of money laundering against separatist leaders like Hurriyat Chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani and others on funding of stone-pelting and other violent protests in Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistan-based groups.

Slamming the central and state governments, Singhvi said that "for the last three years both central and state governments individually and in coalition have done nothing".

Singhvi said that there has never been such a rapid, accelerated tragic decline in governance as was witnessed in the last 36 months.

He accused the government of not having a consistent policy on Jammu and Kashmir.

Singhvi targeted the Centre for what he said was selective and opportunistic witch-hunting of the opposition and said it was being done to hide its own failures.

"The Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate have acted against 34 leaders, of which 30 are from opposition parties," he said.

"In the Janaradan Reddy case, the ED didn't do anything. You (government) spared him even when he spent over Rs 500 crore on his daughter's marriage," the Congress leader alleged.

Slamming the government for not acting in Madhya Pradesh's Vyapam scam, which was handed over to the CBI last year, Singhvi said: "You (Centre) handed over the Vyapam case to the CBI only after the Supreme Court order."

"But in the last one and half years, what is the progress in the case?" he questioned, adding that it was India's biggest inter-state scam, in which a lot of money was involved and many connected with it had died one by one.