The Congress state president opined that prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Dehradun was disappointing and more of a “flying electoral visit”. The Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee president Kishore Upadhyay alleged that hundreds of bus-loads of people were hired by the Bharatiya Janata Party leaders to muster up a crowd for the PM’s address on Parade Ground. Claiming that all the roads of Uttarakhand are already all-weather roads, the PCC chief averred that changing the title of the Char Dham Yatra route to the Char Dham Yatra project was an electoral announcement with uncertain benefit to the state. Announcements made by the PM in Dehradun on Tuesday were akin to the package given to Bihar before the Vidhan Sabha election in that state, opined the PCC chief.
Upadhyay stated, “The hollow announcement made by the prime minister in Dehradun is like the announcement of a package he had made ahead of the Vidhan Sabha elections in Bihar which will be hard to ascertain after the elections. In its two and half years in office, the BJP-led Central Government has mainly focused on altering the titles and names of projects and schemes which had been implemented by the Congress party. The prime minister acted similarly in Dehradun. The level of insensitivity is such that he did not even mention the issue of rehabilitation of 342 disaster-affected villages in the state.”
The PCC president went on to alleged, “Hundreds of buses from Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor and Paunta and 200 buses from Saharanpur carried crowds hired by the BJP for the prime minister’s rally. Once again, the people of Uttarakhand have been thugged. The PM’s Uttarakhand visit disappointed the people of Uttarakhand and even the BJP members,” averred the PCC president.
Upadhyay further said that despite the PCC and State Government repeatedly demanding the needful, the Central Government has not provided Uttarakhand the benefit of any scheme. On the contrary, cuts were made in the Uttarakhand state budget under various heads in an attempt to damage the economy of the state. “Had prime minister Narendra Modi been a well-wisher of Uttarakhand state, he would have announced job reservation in central government services for the people of Uttarakhand, special industrial package and special state category status for the state,” he said. Upadhyay said that the prime minister would have talked about a a sustainable Himalayan development policy had he really been concerned about the state.