Election cauldron on the boil in Uttarakhand, the ruling Congress is nowadays in an unenviable plight in Haridwar district. Dengue afflicting Congress leaders from the district one after another, the party is being forced to conceal things as far as possible.
They know that if things come to the fore it would reflect negatively on the electoral prospects of the ruling party.
The people are angry over the State health department having miserably failed to contain the dreaded vector-borne disease.
Despite the district health department’s claim of only one death from the disease, the common people say that the real figure is much higher. They claim that the Government authority is counting the death that occurred in the Government-run hospital only.
They are choosing to ignore the death due to dengue that occurred in private hospitals and also at their homes. Many say that the district hospital reserving just six beds for the dengue patients, they have been forced to throng the private hospitals for treatment.
“Given the anger running deep in the public psyche, if we make things public about a host of Congress leaders from the district having fallen prey to the mosquito-borne disease the level of anger would further rise, blighting the electoral prospects of our candidates at the hustings,” said a senior district Congress leader.
The list of the Congress leaders down with dengue is long. Among them are Manoj Dhangar, Dinesh Pundir, Babar Khan from laksar, Purushottam Sharma, Anil Choudhary, Gaurav Chauhan, Sachin Choudhary and Tanveer Qureshi.
Besides, many of the relations of the ruling party leaders like Sanjay Sharma, Roshan lal, Rao Afaq Ali, Arshad Khwaja and Tahir Hasan are learnt to have been afflicted by the disease.
The Opposition BJP is now waiting to spring on the Congress, making full use of the dreaded spread of the disease and the woeful inadequacy of the government arrangement to control the raging menace. “Of course, we would make it an election issue.
The government did precious little to contain the disease.
Fogging started late and it was inadequate too. There are just six beds kept for the Dengue patients in the district facility, something that landed people in serious problem with the alarming rise in the number of the afflicted patients.
What is more, the state government has unabashedly trained its machinery to suppress figures, eyes fixed on election.
Many district Congress leaders themselves are angry over the state government having failed to rise to the occasion.
We would expose the state government’s blatant failure on the matter,” said a district BJP leader.