Hitting back at Congress president Sonia Gandhi, chief minister Raman Singh on Saturday strongly denied all the allegations made by her against the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Chhattisgarh.
Speaking to reporters at Raigarh, the chief minister said there was no truth in the allegations made by Gandhi at an election rally in Bhatgaon on Friday.Gandhi had accused the state government of snatching lands from the farmers and handing over coal and steel to selected people. Strongly refuting the allegations, the chief minister said, it was the Central government which allocates the coal blocks, not the state government.
The issue of coal block allocations belonged to that period when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of the Congress-led Central government was holding the coal ministry.When the Central government-run NMDC has been doing most of the iron ore mining in the state there was no justification for blaming the state government for it, he said.
Replying to a question, the chief minister said Sonia Gandhi should look at her own house instead of pointing fingers at others.Citing the report published in the US's Wall Street Journal newspaper, the chief minister said Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra set up a company in India named Skylight with the investment of only one lakh rupees in 2007. Its properties in five years, that is in 2012, increased to 324 crore rupees, he said.
Cracking a joke, Singh said the son-in-law who makes such a wonderful magic should have been the 'Finance Minister' of the country.Sonia Gandhi who herself is the chairperson of the UPA government could have made him the finance minister. By not doing that, she lost an excellent opportunity because the BJP is now going to form the government at the Centre led by Narendra Modi, Singh said.
Robert Vadra has been facing serious charges of buying farmlands at throwaway prices in Haryana, he said.Vadra's company has invested Rs 53 lakh dollar in a hotel constructed by DlF Company near Delhi as a 50 per cent partner, from where he got this money, the chief minister asked.Singh also refuted the allegation made by Gandhi that the state government has failed to implement the rural employment guarantee scheme properly and prevent the migration of the people.
"Before making such allegation, Gandhi should have first done her homework," the chief minister said. She should know that it was the Congress-led Central government, which honoured Chhattisgarh with five awards for best implementation of the scheme, he said. Singh said the rural development minister Jairam Ramesh had handed over the award to the state only two and half months ago, on Feburary 2, 2014.