Srinagar, June 27 -- J&K Peoples Conference (PC) president and Handwara MLA Sajad Lone on Friday drew a sharp distinction between outsourcing and backdoor appointments, calling the NC government's conversion of public sector jobs into privately "outsourced" positions a far graver crime against the youth of Jammu and Kashmir, while simultaneously cautioning the PDP against muddying the waters for the sake of political point-scoring. He said that he had anticipated that the outsourcing controversy would eventually descend into a blame game between the two parties, and warned that mislabelling the issue does a disservice to the thousands of young people affected by it. "These are not backdoor appointments. These are outsourced appointments of government jobs, and that distinction matters enormously," he said, adding that when he raised the question in the assembly, the government itself confirmed that 25,000 jobs had been outsourced. He labelled it as a grave crime against the youth. Describing it as the "systematic privatisation of public employment", he said the practice introduces a fundamentally corrupt model in which outsourcing companies and the ruling class collude at the expense of ordinary job-seekers, rendering what should be secure government positions into precarious, temporary engagements that can be terminated at will. "Every new government will bring a new outsourcing agency," he warned, "and those employed under this system will pay the price." He said that he had hoped the return of an elected government would reverse this course, only to find that the current administration had proceeded to "outsource" the remaining ICPS posts. "To my horror, this elected government has proven to be as malafide in its intentions toward these employees as the post-2019 regime was," he said....