The BJP on Friday came up with the performance report card of its six-time sitting MP Ramesh Bais (from the Raipur lok Sabha seat) in a bid to silence the Congress’ allegation of the former having been ‘inactive’ in his constituency.
“AICC president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi did not ask a single question in the Parliament during their entire five year tenure, while BJP MP Bais asked as many as 291 questions besides two supplementaries during the same tenure,” State BJP vice-president and spokesperson, Sachchidanand Upasane, said on Friday.
The lok Sabha website is the testimony to the number of questions asked by the MPs in which Bais had 92 per cent attendance registered in the Parliament which is equivalent to the national average whereas both AICC president and vice-president had 47 and 43 per cent attendance respectively, he said.
Upasane said that as per the lok Sabha website, Bais participated in 18 debates in the Parliament while both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi participated in 3 and 2 debates respectively during their tenure.
The way Congress party had been hurling allegations at Bais, it appears it is not fighting a Parliamentary poll but a municipal poll, he said.
Upasane said that the Congress has neither any issue nor any vision. “It is our open challenge to the Congress candidate from Raipur lok Sabha seat to organise a debate in a public forum over allegations hurled at the sitting MP from Raipur,” he said.
“Activeness cannot be defined by only giving speeches but doing ground level work. The Congress party had been distributing leaflets without mentioning the name of the printer in Raipur which made it imperative for the BJP to come out with the list of achievements of its six times MP from Raipur,” he added.
Reading out the contents from the long list of work done by Bais in his constituency, Upasane said that it was the BJP MP whose untiring efforts led to the formation of Chhattisgarh State during the NDA rule.
During the tenure of the sitting MP, the AIIMS was established in Raipur besides his contribution in getting Bilaspur the ‘Railway Zone’ status and the declaration of Raipur Railway Station as a ‘Model Station’.
Bais is one MP who fully utilized the funds allocated for the development works in his constituency, he said.
Speaking on the occasion, State BJP Working Committee member Chhagan Mundhra asked the Congress candidate from the Raipur lok Sabha seat Satyanarayan Sharma to list the work done by him as a minister both in undivided Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Sharma had been Minister for Housing and Environment, Minerals, Education and Prohibition. When he was the Education Minister, a school opened on a Rs10 ‘Stamp Paper’ in the public participation mode but a distillery was set up on the land in which the school was to be established in Chhattisgarh, Mundhra said
When Sharma was Minister for Mineral Resources, a conspiracy was hatched to sell the Devbhog diamond mines in Chhattisgarh to a foreign company. It was also during Sharma’s tenure that a steel unit came up in his constituency Mandirhasaud near Raipur which generated heavy pollution in the region which was only corrected when the BJP government came to power in Chhattisgarh, he said.