In a bid to grab the attention of the Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Railway Minister, who have allegedly failed to address Uttarakhand's issues in the railway and general budgets 2014-15, Chief Minister Harish Rawat has written a letter to the Members of Parliament of the State to raise issues related to the State, especially about the special financial package of Rs4,000 crore for the reconstruction of disaster-affected areas of the State and ‘Green Bonus’ during discussion of the Budget. Chief Minister’s media in-charge Surendra Kumar has disclosed this while talking to media persons at the Secretariat on Friday. The CM has also sent a copy of the letter to all seven MPs, including three ex-CM Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, Maj Gen Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri and Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank; MPs Ajay Tamta, Mala Rajya lakshmi Shah, Tarun Vijay and Mahendra singh Mahra, to raise these issues during dabate on budget.
The CM has alleged that the previous Government has accepted the Green Bonus to the State in-principle, but the incumbent Narendra Modi-led NDA regime has forgotten to consider the demand. "Even we had sought Rs4,000 crore additional financial asssistance to rebuild the damaged infrastruture and rehabilitate the disaster-affected people. Even they did not consider to give additional assistance to the State.”
"We have been spending lots of money to save the environment and we are not being allowed to build hydro power projects, not being allocated coal blocks to build thermal power plants. For this, we sought Rs2,000 crore as Green bonus because whatever money we spend in saving the environment, benefits the entire world."
In his letter, the CM mentioned that Uttarakand is logistically important for the country's security and they could contribute by sanctioning budget for the previous Government's rail projects like Tanakpur-Bageshwar, Doiwala-Rishikesh, Haridwar-Roorkee, Ramnagar-Chaukhutia.The Chief Minister has expressed shock that during general elections-2014 BJP had shown deep association with Uttarakhand people and even the people responded by electing BJP candidates from all five lok Sabha seats of the State.
"Now, the BJP is shirking responsibility; so he would ask from the Union Government what they want from UttarakhandIJ Currently, Uttarakhand is facing problems of migration and if it continues, border areas would become no-man's land. Do they really want Uttarakhand's border areas to turn into 'no man's landIJ" "As far as Himalayan Studies Centre is concerned, they should have also allocated additional budget for the exisiting institutions like Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, but they did not bother." In these circumstances, Chief Minister Rawat has appealed to State MPs to be vocal and raise these issues for the betterment of Uttarakhand.