Tearing into the ruling party, the leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly, Ajay Bhatt said that Harish Rawat Government has made a mockery of the people by holding a Cabinet meeting at Kedarnath while keeping the common people at bay. “The CM seems to lack spunk to stare at the ground reality in the face,” the senior State BJP leader said.
Snubbing the Chief Minister for vowing to cleanse the Holy Ganga, he said the CM has just hijacked one of the important issues the BJP has remained focused on for long. It is strange the CM has talked about keeping Ganga clean at Haridwar.
Had the State Government been serious to rebuild Kedarnath the CM should have convened the Assembly session and placed the fine print of the project in the House. “The grim reality is that the disaster- affected people keep committing suicide and the State Government cannot care less,” Bhatt said.
“He took his entire cabinet for the meeting, but the much-vaunted Cabinet meeting ended in an hour. That made things crystal clear. It was more a cheap and flippant gimmick rather than a serious attempt to take on things in earnest,” the BJP leader said.
Taking cudgels at the Government, he said a large number of people had gathered in Kedarnath to interact with the ministers. But they did not care to even talk to them. In short, it was nothing more than a formal Cabinet meeting. The decisions had been taken there in typed format and the ministers said just things they were meant to say as per the script prepared beforehand. “It was a sly ploy to hoodwink the people,” he said.
He also reiterated if the State Government is unable to cleanse the Kedarnath shrine of the debris and the bodies the BJP is ready to press its volunteers to do the same.