The Union Home Minister Amit Shah set the campaign of the Bharatiya Janata Party rolling for the upcoming Assembly elections in Uttarakhand on Saturday by addressing a well attended rally in Dehradun.

After inaugurating the Mukhyamantri Ghasyari Kalyan Yojana (MGKY) and computerisation of cooperative committees, Shah lashed out at the leaders of Congress party for coming out only at the time of elections.

He said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi the BJP is committed to the development of Uttarakhand and in the last five years, the Union Government has sanctioned projects worth Rs 85,000 crore to a small state like Uttarakhand. Shah challenged that the Congress party that ruled the country for ten years prior to the NDA Government should come out with a report card on what it has done for Uttarakhand.

Terming Congress a corrupt and opportunist party which is only interested in grabbing power by any means, the Union Home minister said that the BJP has fulfilled 85 per cent of its promises made in its election manifesto of 2017.

He said that since former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had created the separate state of Uttarakhand, he and other BJP leaders consider it their moral responsibility to develop the state. Shah praised the chief minister of Uttarakhand Pushkar Singh Dhami for efficient handling of the recent disaster triggered by heavy rainfall.

In his address chief minister Dhami said that the state received a warning of heavy rain on October 16 and the entire machinery was immediately activated to take up the challenge.

“The rainfall which occurred on October 18 and 19 was more than which occurred during the Kedarnath disaster. We immediately halted the Char Dham Yatra and requested people not to come to the state. There were more than 1.5 lakh pilgrims in the state and not even a single casualty was reported,’’ he said.