Enigma of luxury Vehicles
Barely one year left for the term of the present Assembly to end, Harish Rawat government has empowered a cabinet minister to purchase new vehicles for the cabinet ministers worth upto Rs 17 lakh per vehicle. This has set tongues wagging a lot. Many explanations are being offered to the decision, taken a few days before March-13-the day the government would complete four years. Some say the decision to provide the cabinet ministers with luxury vehicles must be viewed against the backdrop of the roads remaining in deplorable condition. This would give them smooth ride on the bumpy roads. Others say it is meant to be rewards to the ministers who have taken immense pains to build the promised roads to development. There is another opinion. The ministers must have luxury vehicles as they have to plunge into marathon rides in months ahead. Time ticking by, they must see to it that the promises they have rolled out must be met on the ground. There are yet others who say that the ministers having miserably failed to fulfil their development pledges must be allowed to spawn awe in the electorate to sway them into voting them back. luxury vehicles are excellent tools to inspire reverence in the common people who are supposed to cower before flamboyance. However, the Opposition fondly hopes that it would trigger collective backlash, clearing decks for them to drive back to power on the vehicles fuelled by the thwarted aspirations of the mass of the people.
Mitra Vipaksh
Strange though it may sound, Uttarakhand BJP has chosen to act like a friendly opposition (Mitra Vipaksh) to the ruling Congress during the ongoing Budget session of the state Assembly. This is clear from the fact that the saffron brigade in the state has resolved to gherao the House on Monday-March 14-the day the Chief Minister Harish Rawat who is also the leader of the House is slated to answer questions regarding the departments under his direct care. Observers say that BJP’s apparent resolve to bare its fangs on the ruling party is nothing but a thinly-veiled stratagem to allow the CM a reprieve. Things are indeed so. If the BJP MlAs are engaged in staging protest and gherao the House on Monday who would grill the CM and expose the ‘omissions or commissions’ of his government inside the HouseIJ Asked to explain the queerness of things, a state BJP leader gave a quizzical half-smile. But the people are not as gullible as they think them to be. They can sift the corn from the chaff. The principal Opposition party in the state raising ‘hammer and tongs’ against the ‘faltering’ state government is likely to be reduced to a paper tiger and its blusters, to ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing.’