Garhwal MP and ex-CM Maj Gen Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri has questions why the Harish Rawat-led State Government had hastily nodded the Char Dham Yatra when the roads had remained in deplorable shape since last year's cataclysmic cloudburst. "Does the State Government want to preset a wrong picture among the pilgrims, who venture to visit the Char Dham shrines to pay obeisance to the reigning deities so as to stop them from coming even in 2015IJ" he asked.
"It all happened because the State Government kept on blurring the jurisdictional purviews of PWD and BRO. This is what has crippled BRO as regards its mandated duty to execute its part of the work. Consequently, the pilgrims are bearing the brunt of the roads remaining frightfully bad," Gen Khanduri alleged.
Keeping his guns trained on the State Government, he said the yatra had proved a damp squib this year. "Frequent suspensions and the negligible number of the pilgrims have reduced it to a fiasco.While 100-150 buses used to go to the Himalayan shrines daily this year the number has plummeted to 10-15 buses a day. Around a dozen pilgrims at best are allowed to visit the shrines when the weather looks up. Do these facts reflect well on the hoary tradition attached with the yatraIJ" he asked.
He further claimed that the yatra route is yet to be repaired. "The tearing hurry with which the yatra was launched regardless of the horrible road condition is proving a riddle to the people of the State.There is no road worth its name to Kedarnath after Sonprayag even a year after the calamity had struck. The Rishikesh-Badrinath highway gets blocked almost daily at lambagad," he said.
He also attributed the poor condition of the roads to the incompetence of the PWD. "Repairing roads in high altitude areas is not the PWD's forte. It neither has the resources nor the training and the work culture required for the task, given the difficulty of the hilly terrain."
"I had urged the then UPA Government in Delhi repeatedly to provide funds to the BRO and entrust it exclusively with the task of reconstructing the damaged roads in the hills," he added.
Gen Khanduri regretted had his advice been considered things would have been far better. "If the current situation persists the yatra next year will again prove a failure," he warned.He also lauded the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for providing Rs 5,000 crore as budgetary provision to implement one rank one pension scheme. They also reiterated that fund crunch would not spike its implementation.
Slamming the State Government, Gen Khanduri said that corruption has reached its zenith under this regime. "To check corruption, the erstwhile BJP government had passed lokayukta Act-2011 and even the President had given his approval. However, the present state government keeps dillydallying and this is why the act is gathering dust."
"Even the Right to Service Act passed by our government was acclaimed by the people, but now the situation is pathetic. We had also made transfer act because we wanted to ensure availability of teachers and doctors in hills schools and hospitals respectively. Now, the people are feeling the differences,"he added.