With the Mandi lok Sabha by-election assuming significance, the BJP on Saturday held a show of strength soon after the party candidate Jai Ram Thakur filed his nomination papers.
Addressing the election rally here, former Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, made a passionate appeal to the people of Mandi Parliamentary constituency, the polling of which is scheduled to be held on June 23 this month, to decimate the corrupt Congress rule which had brought the country on the brink of bankruptcy.
He asked the BJP workers to gird up their lions and make the BJP candidate Jai Ram Thakur successful with big majority. “During the Congress rule corruption, unemployment and inflation had made the lives of the people, particularly the poor, unbearable,” he said.
Dhumal said never in the past the people had been disillusioned with the newly elected Government in the shortest period of 5 months because the development works had come to a grinding halt and the Government had been engaged in postings, transfers and witch-hunting ever since it took over.
He alleged that the PDS system had been rendered useless with the supply of sub-standard foodgrains, edible oils and pulses for reasons best known to the Government.
Dhumal said the newly elected Congress Government had done great injustice to the former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who provided lot of financial assistance to the hilly State including the special economic package by removing his name from ambulances, ration bags, students uniforms etc. What was the worse the UPA Government withdrew the economic package to Himachal granted by VajpayeeIJ Why people should cast their votes to Congress, he asked.
He said BJP had approved about half a dozen of colleges in different parts of Madi Parliamentary constituency, but Congress Government on coming to power cancelled the approval. Virbhadra Singh, he alleged, was anti-Mandi which provided him a spring board to fulfill his political ambitions. He did not reciprocate the love, help and support which the people of Mandi gave him.
Veteran BJP leader Shanta Kumar described the present UPA government at the centre as “the most corrupt and worthless” in the history of independent India. “The old, infirm and retired persons ruling the country were looting it with impunity. With loot and corruption they had done irreparable loss to the country which was once called a “golden sparrow”. It was in paramount national interest of get rid of corrupt Congress rule, he said.
Those sitting in New Delhi seemed to oblivious about the grave threat posed by the Chinese dragon which was out to repeat tragic memories of 1962 when amidst the slogans of “Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai” she had stabbed us at the back and invaded India and reached up to Tejpur, but the Congress leaders appeared to have learnt no lesion, he regretted.
Jai Ram Thakur, candidate from Mandi Parliamentary constituency, Balbir Punj Rajya Sabha member and BJP in charge HP, senior leader JP Nadda and about two-dozen former Ministers and MlAs also spoke in the rally.