The Budget session of the State Assembly, slated to commence at Gairsain on March 20, is likely to start on a stormy note as a host of senior state Congress leaders, including the former Chief Minister Harish Rawat and former Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Assembly MlA Govind Singh Kunjwal and Anusuya Prasad Maikhuri, would stage demonstration outside the Assembly on the same day.
Quizzed on the issues they would take up during the stir, Kunjwal said that their principal demand is the Governmental announcement of making Gairsain the permanent capital of the state. “Besides, we would agitate against the state government having failed to make a headway regarding the previous government's move to build a secretariat at Gairsain. The funds allotted by the previous government on the count have remained unspent. Besides, the state government is sitting on the project of building roads to connect Gairsain with other districts,” he said.
However, when asked whether Congress has made up its mind to end vacillation on the emotive capital shift issue and go all-out to demand Gairsain being declared as the permanent capital of the state, the leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly and a senior Congress leader Indira Hridayesh declined to answer. “Better ask the former Speaker Kunjyal. He is in a better position to say whether the party has taken a principled stand on it with the leaders and the activists being taken on board,” she said. Significantly, she is not among the leaders named by the former Speaker who would lead the party stir at Gairsain on the opening day of the session. Kunjwal said that he did not know whether Indira Hridayesh would be there or not.
Notably, Hridayesh is known to lead the camp within the state Congress which is staunchly opposed to Gairsain being declared as the permanent capital of the state.
Kunjyal said that apart from demand of Gairsain being declared as the permanent state capital, they would articulate anger over the state government's failure to spend the released fund for the construction of a Secretariat at Gairsain. “The Congress-helmed government had drafted a roadmap of connecting Gairsain with roads from all the districts of the state. Things are vegetating now with the BJP government choosing to sit on it. They must answer what they are up to.
Tingling with the issue is one and taking things to their logical conclusion with firm steps is another,” the senior Congress leader said.