Two days after emerging triumphant from the Rajya Sabha challenge, Chief Minister Harish Rawat trained his guns on the Centre and the BJP, saying that the saffron party was responsible for the serious financial crisis the State had been passing through. “We regret to say that the BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre has landed us in the crisis that is staring us in the face,” he said while talking to the media persons on Monday.
He reiterated his demand that the Centre must clarify things regarding the status of the State Budget passed by the State Assembly. “I would soon write to the Prime Minister and the Home Minister to learn about the status of the State budget which was passed by the state assembly in March this year. We are in a fog despite the fact that the Supreme Court, the High Court and the Speaker have made it clear that it was duly passed by the State Assembly,” he said.
He further said that it was true that the passage of the budget on March 18 was followed by fast-paced developments, both positive and negative. “Nine Congress MlAs turned rebel and joined hands with the Opposition while the latter was demanding division of vote on appropriation bill,” he said.
Seeking to differentiate politics from the interests of the State people, he said that two can be muddled together to the detriment of the people’s interests. “The political parties are free to play game of political one-upmanship under the framework of Parliamentary democracy. But this should not be allowed to cloud over the state’s overall interests. Two must be kept apart,” he said.
The CM appealed to the Opposition BJP to help them get back the state budget. Playing the statesman’s card, he said that it is high time that they should all shed sectarian mindset and work together as one team for the interests of the state.
“BJP being the ruling party at the Centre, we need their cooperation to execute the development projects of the state. Assembly election is just six to seven months away. We must work together to ensure that the state does not land in crippling resource crunch in 2017,” CM said.
He said that he is now a worried CM (Chintit CM). “I keep appealing to the Union Government, the Prime Minister, in particular, to inform us about the status of the State budget (Meru Budget Kakh Gaye). Now, with the Centre remaining indifferent, we would be forced to take things to the people’s court,” he said.
CM said that a newborn state could not afford to bide time. “We must act as things warrant us to act. Things must be set right before it is too late. We cannot ignore the fact that the pace of development here which was hovering around a whopping 14 percent has slowed down. Planned budget does not mean mere execution of the ongoing work but it also give direction to the future roadmap of development. This is serious lacuna, something that needs to be addressed,” he said.
Rolling out his roadmap for the coming days, CM said that they have decided to conduct survey of such areas which are financially and infrastructurally weak. We have done survey upto the block level and found there is several imbalance. We are now planning to constitute expert group led by a Cabinet Minister. Its two members would be experts in their own fields. One of them would be former CGM of NABARD Mohanan. We would do our best to implement their recommendation to speed up things,” he said.
“There is several areas in the state reeling under backwardness like Binar river area of vikasnagar, Talla of Champawat and several places in Haridwar between Bhagwanpur and Jwalapur,” he further said, adding that they would focus on them to eradicate the imbalance of development.
Invoking federal structure, CM said that state is nothing except being a part of the union. “But the Union cannot do development if it ignores the states. Now political crisis being over, we must eschew the divisive mindset and train focus exclusively on development,” he said.