Srinagar, Feb. 20 -- Jammu & Kashmir People's Conference (PC) president and Handwara MLA Sajad Lone on Thursday raised in J&K assembly the issue of police verification policy in the Union Territory saying if one person in a family commits a mistake, then hundreds of youth associated with that family are denied police clearance, a party spokesperson said. Lone described police verification as having "degenerated into a form of collective punishment". "If one person in your family has committed a mistake, then hundreds of youth associated with that family are denied police clearance," he said. Citing a case from Baramulla district, Lone informed the House about a young man who had secured a handsome job package in Hyderabad but was denied clearance on the grounds that his uncle was allegedly an overground worker of militants. "The reality was that the uncle had himself been killed by an overground militant. Despite this, the application was rejected," Lone said as quoted by the spokesperson. "In many cases, the youth were born after the death of the person because of whom they are being punished. Are they not Indians? What will they do now?," he said, adding that even medical graduates were being caught in the net, unable to practice despite years of study. He urged the chief minister Omar Abdullah to take up the matter in Delhi. On demolitions of various structures in the UT, Lone highlighted what he called a glaring contradiction. "While senior government functionaries had visited affected families in certain cases, the government's formal reply in the House defended the actions," he said. Referring to developments in his constituency, Lone said 55 shopkeepers who had purchased shops through government auctions decades ago had been served eviction notices. "You know very well," he told the Treasury benches, "that in the event of a hostile government, these very notices will be used for dispossession and you know exactly in which region."...