Bhatt outsmarts Rawat, calls for creation of more districts

In a move to hijack the political agenda of the Chief Minister Harish Rawat on carving out eight new districts out of the present sixteen, the State BJP chief Ajay Bhatt has written to the CM on Friday, demanding  four new districts - Ranikhet, Didihaat, Kotdwar and Yamunotri be created immediately in the interests of development in the under-developed regions. He mentioned that despite  the previous BJP regime having issued a notification on the matter,  the Congress regime  has chosen to sit on it. “This is the 400th letter my party has sent to the CM, urging him to execute the previous BJP Government’s notification to carve out the four new districts,” he said.

Invoking the BJP’s stance on making smaller administrative units to facilitate all-round development, Bhatt said that the stance is inspired by the party’s view. “It is with this view  that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime carved out   Uttarakhand of Uttar Pradesh  in 2000,” he said. He slammed the CM for indulging in idle flippancy over creating new  districts without caring to act on it. “Ours is a party that is committed to carving out smaller units to reach the fruits of development across the country,” Bhatt averred.

Citing that the hilly terrain  of the State is hard to appropriately develop unless there are smaller administrative units to cater to region-specific development, the State BJP chief said  that carving out new  districts is an imperative to make Uttarakhand a developed State.

“Inspired by our party’s  broad vision of development, the BJP Government decided to carve out four new districts-two each in Garhwal and Kumaon divisions. The erstwhile Government issued notification on December 8, 2011 and its letter number is 1553/XXII/(1)/2011. Thereafter, the Congress came to power and the notification  was dumped in the backburner for vicious sectarian reasons,” he said.

“We are urging the State Government to implement  first the previous Government’s notification of creating four new districts without losing further time. If the notification is executed they can go for creating more new districts. let them bring proposals and we would support them whole-heartedly,” Bhatt said.

Slamming the CM for maintaining a studied silence  on hundreds of letters being sent to him, demanding the same, the BJP leader said that if he chooses to sit on the 400th  letter it would expose that his empathy for creating new districts is spurious. “However, if the people blesses us in the  upcoming Assembly election the first thing we would do is to execute the previous BJP Government’s notification to create four new districts,” he affirmed.