Amid widespread protests inside and outside the House by Opposition parties over CNT-SPT amendment Chief Minister Raghubar Das has given an assurance to the tribal communities about their land ownership.
Responding during the debate over Budget on Saturday the CM questioned the legitimacy and justification of the JMM for holding the House on ransom. “We have been witnessing protests over domicile policy and CNT-SPT amendments and about the words of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I want to assure the House that no one can snatch away any tribal land in Jharkhand,” said he.
When some members referred to the reported disagreement of senior BJP leader and former Chief Minister Arjun Munda about the amendments done, the CM said that even he had supported it in the working committee of the party and told that the Government should apprise the people about the good works done.
Nevertheless the CM also took a dig on the protesting members, particularly from the JMM, who even on Saturday continued with their strategy and sat inside the well demanding to recall the Bills passed. leader of Opposition Hemant Soren though did not participate in the debate but kept interjecting when other members were expressing their views.
“The House has turned into a living corpus whose soul is dead. The House is not taking up the CNT-SPT issue which is the most important for us, more than even the Budget” said Soren. The JMM’s disruptions forced two adjournments washing out entire Question Hour and Zero Hour.
“The House should be run with dignity. There is always scope for debate. But what is going on here is nothing of that kind. We all have to ponder over if there is any relation between this kind of behaviour of the members and their reelection to the House where majority of them fail,” the CM posed the question.
He went on justifying the Budget provisions and also put a light on growing GSDP of the State which is fourth in the country. “I enquired this to the officials and came to know that it is because investment coming and bringing Government schemes on ground. The State had recorded GSDP of Rs27,600 crore which has gone up 2.80 lakh crore at present. We have also traveled a lot on delivery mechanism and Jharkhand is no longer known for its corruption,” said the CM.
He also snubbed Opposition members’ claim that the Government had not been able to spend its budgeted amount and stressed that 60 per cent of the plan budget and 97 per cent of the total budget passed last year had been utilised. The CM also counted on proposals building cold storages and food processing plants in order to save farm produces from perishing.
During his speech the CM promised extensive uses of IT for eliminating middlemen from the system and house for all by 2022. “Our agenda is clear which is ‘garib kalyan’. Our priority is to change the burdened life of destitute. Execution of schemes has also been a problem and we are working in that direction,” he summed up.
The CM on the occasion claimed that higher level corruption had been tamed considerably but its existence at lower strata was indeed a challenge. This also brought him in a face-off with JVM’s Pradeep Yadav and both the leaders challenged each other. The CM told Yadav to come clean on the land purchased by him.