Former Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Harish Rawat averred that on the one hand the central and State Governments are stalling developmental works due to shortage of funds and on the other hand the Bharatiya Janata Party is feeling buoyed up after collecting crores of rupees in donation for the party. He said that money collected through corrupt means ends up causing destruction.
He said that the Central Government had ignored Uttarakhand in the general budget presented in the recent past. No allocation was made towards green bonus for Uttarakhand, the excise duty limit for industries was not raised, no provision was made for compensating Uttarakhand for the loss due to discontinuation of VAT and introduction of GST and the border area development fund was cut by about ` 400 crore.
Rawat further said that no increase was made in the budget for the Namami Gange programme and the railway line expansion project was not included in the budget to the detriment of Uttarakhand’s interests. While the Central Government talks of doubling the income of farmers, no noticeable increase was made in the budget for agriculture. The budget for PMGSY to facilitate infrastructural development in rural areas was also kept as it was earlier. later, while visiting temples to offer his prayers, the former chief minister said that the party workers should unite and put in effort to ensure a victory for the Congress in the local body elections slated to be held in April.