In order to present a rosy picture of the State to President Pranab Mukherjee slated to arrive on a four-day visit (September 27-30) to Uttarakhand, the State Government machinery is apparently working on a war-footing with the Chief Secretary personally supervising all the preparations. Seeing the focus of the authorities to ensure presentation of a ‘positive’ picture, officials concerned have pressed several teams to fill the road potholes also with the use of rollers to resolve the prominent civic problem which they had remained apathetic towards so far.
According to the official plan, the president would participate in Ganga Arti on September 29 and will return from Haridwar to Dehradun by road due to which the Public Works Department officials have been directed to make the said road good enough to provide a smooth drive to the president’s motorcade.
Considering this, the daily commuters moving between Haridwar and Dehradun ona daily basis are saying that it is thanks to the president’s planned visit that the officials responsible can be seen busy on road either filling potholes or clearing brushes from footpaths. Even the bushes and other foliage growing along the stretch of the Indian Institute of Petroleum boundary wall along the highway is being cleard away on a war footing. Even the main road leading to Haridwar was full of pot-holes at several places, where NHAI has constructed nullah to drain out the water from either side, had collapsed because they had made nullah from both side but did not complete the task due to reasons best known to the officials concerned. Such problems used to force the vehicular traffic to move ahead at a slow pace whereas now the necessary tasks have been done to make the road free of potholes.
An official said that president Mukherjee, who could not visit Kedarnath last time due to inclement weather, is visiting Uttarakhand to pay obeisance at Kedarnath which could not be undertaken properly the previous time.
It will be recalled that when the president had not been able to visit Kedarnath the previous time, chief minister Harish Rawat had invited Mukherjee to visit Kedarnath again in the month of September.
This is also the reason why officials concerned have been told to ‘beautify’ the Kedarnath area as well.
Security has put on high alert especially along the route to be taken by the presidential motorcade. Meanwhile the Intelligence Bureau has sounded a red alert on airports in North India so security has been beefed up in and around the Dehradun airport. Talking to the Pioneer the inspector general of police, Deepam Seth said that this is an alert for airports in the entire north india and so should not be clubbed with the presidential visit.