The Congress on Sunday alleged that the power hungry BJP Government has squandered more than Rs 450 crore public funds, in the name of Vikas Yatra that concluded on Saturday, Sept 7 in tribal heartland Surguja district.
In a press statement issued here on Sunday, the party leaders alleged that the BJP Government has spent Rs 200 crore for the preparations for the Vikas Yatra like hoardings, poster, banner, vehicles, transportation, advertisements, food, and for gathering crowd. In the salary head of Government officers and employees deployed in the arrangement of the Yatra Rs 150 crore and that of security personnel Rs 80 crore had been spent, besides Rs 20 crore for barricades and securitymeasures, the release added.
The Congress challenged the BJP Government and Chief Minister Raman Singh to show moral courage to make public the actual figure of expenditure incurred in the Vikas Yatra, before the forthcoming assembly election. The Congress medial department president Shilesh Nitin Trivedi said that in view of the forthcoming assembly election, the BJP Government, through the Vikas Yatra, has shown the pomposity of development.
He said that in the Vikas Yatra programmes, the chief minister has announced works worth thousands of crores. like the earlier ones, these declarations would also be proved to be on papers only, he added. Trivedi said that both the chief minister and the BJP Government know very well that it could not complete these declared works, for which they had performed bhumi poojan and laid foundation stones, just two months before the election.
Deliberately, with the sole intention of taking election benefits and to make the people fool, these declarations have been made during the Vikas Yatra, he alleged. The declaration and bhumi poojan of works costing thousands of crores during the Mukhyamantri Vikas Yatra has proved that the Government has not done any work in the State, he said. Trivedi alleged that as from Patwari to collector all the employees and officers were engaged in the Vikas Yatra, official work has been come to a standstill.
People were compelled to make rounds of Government offices and the BJP Government was making false promises during the name of Vikas Yatra, he added.