Srinagar, May 22 -- Advocating for restoration of Jammu and kashmir's statehood and special status, deputy chief minister (CM) Surinder Choudhary on Thursday said that the demolition of houses in Jammu would not have happened had J&K been a state and the bureaucracy under the elected government. "If only J&K was a state today and it had its own special status, then we would have seen who would demolish a house. The NC government has always provided homes to people," he said, stressing: "What falls is not the house of a Muslim or a Hindu but of a human being. We guarantee that we will not allow a single house to fall whenever we get our statehood and special status." Choudhary said that whatever happened in Sidhra was condemnable. "We have been brought to power by people, and the Omar Abdullah government will never want this (to happen) as it represents all the MLAs of the UT," Choudhary, who was in North Kashmir to offer his condolences to Member Parliament Engineer Rashid on his father's death, told media persons. As many as 32 illegal structures of the Gujjar community were demolished in a joint action by the forest department, the revenue department and police in the wee hours on Tuesday to reclaim "illegally encroached forest land." He lamented that the IAS and IPS officers, who were not under the elected government, were taking decisions in J&K. "It is our misfortune that today the IAS and IPS cadres are not under this government and they take decisions sitting in their offices," he said. Choudhary lashed out at the forest department for its actions. "As these houses were demolished by the forest department, we would like to ask whether these houses were constructed overnight. It would have taken at least a year or two to construct the houses and people saved every single penny to build them. And one fine morning you come with bulldozers and demolish them," he said. Leaders have expressed outrage against the demolition. The Omar Abdullah-led NC government has constituted a fact-finding committee to inquire and report on any violations of the Forest Rights Act, 2006....