The Congress has hit out at the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, criticising aspects of his address at Kedarnath on Friday. The former Chief Minister Harish Rawat’s spokesman Surendra Kumar said that the Prime Minister, in his address at Kedarnath did not refer to the relocation of 350 disaster affected villages, green bonus, funding pattern according to special status for the state of Uttarakhand, fund stuck under various projects and fund pending release under the disaster fund. He opined that by keeping these issues out of his address, the prime minister had once again disappointed the people of Uttarakhand. Kumar stated, “While talking about organic farming, the prime minister forgot that the Central Government has not yet been able to do anything for loan waiver to farmers and tackling degeneration of farming.
A considerable amount of funds for farming and horticulture is also pending release from the Central Government. The prime minister did not do well, focusing his speech at Kedarnath on toilets. It would have been better had he talked about toilets on some other occasion.”
Referring to Modi’s recollection of his visit to the disaster affected Kedarnath earlier, Kumar said that “during his June 2013 visit, his concern was mainly regarding the pilgrims from Gujarat”.
“The former Chief Minister who had opposed Modi’s visit during the post-disaster period at that time is now a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Earlier during a public meeting in Dehradun after the disaster, the Prime Minister himself had taunted the government led by that Chief Minister as one akin to a scooter guzzling 35 litres of fuel.