Chief Minister Harish Rawat seems to have forgotten the concept of welfare State and is instead focusing on real estate, said Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Anoop Nautiyal while addressing newsmen on Friday.
launching a scathing attack on Rawat, the AAP leader charged him with working as a real estate businessman and demanded that the State Government should bring in a white paper on all land deals in excess of 25 acres from January 2014 till date. He said that it is a shame that the proposal of Dehradun for smart city figured on the last position among all proposals.
Nautiyal said that Chief Minister of Uttarakhand should personally owe the responsibly of ignominy faced by the state in the smart city race. He claimed that there seems to be a pattern in the state getting a battering in such rankings as a recent report lists Uttarakhand on 23 position on ease of doing business while Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh finding third and fourth place, even though they were created with Uttarakhand.
The AAP leader listed the State capital finding 26 position out of 28 state capitals surveyed in Swachch Bharat ranking as another such drubbing in recent times. He claimed that successive failures have proved that Harish Rawat has failed as a CM.
On the Dehradun faring so poorly in the smart city race, he said, “The Chief Minister seems to have a wrong concept of smart city as he tends to links it with land. Out of top twenty cities which were selected 18 submitted a proposal based on retrofitting concept while one city’s proposal was based on redevelopment. Bhuwneshwar topped the list with a proposal which combined redevelopment and retrofitting concepts.”
The AAP leader said that the rejection of proposal of Dehradun has come as a relief for the tea estate labours and the people of the state capital. He said that the state government should acquire the land of tea estate and develop the land of 2000 acres by employing concepts of ecotourism, horticulture, tea production and biodiversity.
Nautiyal claimed victory of AAP agitation against the choice of land for smart city project and dedicated it to late Goura Devi who was one of the pioneers of the world famous Chipko movement, common people of the state and environmentalists who opposed the plan. The AAP leader warned of a massive agitation if the state government sticks to its plan on smart city in the tea estate.