The Uttarakhand Congress president Pritam Singh started his ‘Parivartan Yatra’ after paying obeisance at Mahasu temple in Hanol in Chakrata on Monday. On the maiden day of the yatra, he was accompanied by his predecessor Kishore Upadhyaya and the leader of the opposition in Uttarakhand Assembly Indira Hridayesh among others.
After offering prayers at the temple considered to house the most revered deity of Janusar region, Pritam Singh addressed a public meeting. In his address, he pilloried both the Centre and the State Government, saying that the people of the country as well as those of Uttarakhand are counting days impatiently to show the BJP the exit door of power.
In a barb targeting the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the State Congress chief said that he had promised that the State would progress by leaps and bounds powered by the double engine if BJP Government was formed in Uttarakhand in the run-up to the Assembly elections in 2017. “I want to thank the people of Chakrata that they saw through the false promises and stood by the Congress during the election when the party was reduced to just 11 seats in Vidhan Sabha and the BJP formed the Government with an overwhelming majority. Modiji also assured that the loans of the farmers would be waived off.
But the tone changed once the election was over. He said that the State Government would decide on the loan waiver and not the Centre. This amounts to the cheapest kind of cheating the people in greed for power,’’ he said.
The PCC president also launched a scathing attack on the Modi Government, citing the economic mess it has landed the country in. He said that its wrong policies have wreaked havoc with the national economy. “The economic growth of the country has been crippled thanks to the devastating move of demonetisation. Add to it, the draconian GST and the ruin of the economy is complete,” he said.
In the first phase, the Parivartan Yatra would traverse through the Tehri Lok Sabha constituency. Pritam would travel through Arakot, Tyuni, Mori, Purola, Naugaon, Ghansali, New Tehri, Chamba and Narendra Nagar and end the first phase of his yatra on January 25 at Muni Ki Reti.
The five phased Yatra, aimed at highlighting the failures of the Union and the State Governments would cover extensively all the five Lok Sabha constituencies of Uttarakhand.