Priority is being decided for those Congress MLAs who are close to the Chief Minister: Jairam
BJP’s former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition Jairam Thakur while addressing a press conference said that BJP will boycott the MLA priority meeting to be held on 3rd and 4th February due to the negative attitude of the Congress government and insult of the MLAs. He said that for the last two years Congress party is in power in Himachal Pradesh and for the last two years our elected MLAs of opposition, I would like to specially mention, have been attending the MLA priority meetings as per tradition but we regret the fact that in the two year tenure, the process of making DPR of opposition MLAs has not happened in most of the places.
He said that if the MLAs want to talk about their respective areas, then we have given priority to one or two specific issues in PWD and IPH, the process of making DPR for them has not started and the two-year term of Congress has been completed. This is the third MLA priority meeting, the question arises that when you do not have to make DPR, then how will the work be done on the instructions of MLAs after that? Moving ahead from that, a new tradition has been started in Himachal Pradesh that even in the previous DPR which has been prepared, a list is being made and presented before the Chief Minister, which DPR is to be presented before NABARD and in that, the DPR made for the MLAs of Bharatiya Janata Party i.e. opposition should be cut in front of them. Jairam said that priority is being decided only for Congress MLAs and among the Congress MLAs, for those MLAs who are close to the Chief Minister. It only seems like a tick in front of their schemes and when we decided to boycott yesterday, then many MLAs from Congress also contacted us saying that our situation is also the same as yours. I think it is very unfortunate that when the Chief Minister was in the opposition, he used to talk at length about MLA institutions, this should happen for MLAs, that should happen for MLAs. For the prerogative of MLAs, we should become one platform and leave aside all other things and work on the platform, but the situation is very unfortunate that if MLA institutions have been completely ruined, then it has happened during the tenure of the present government.
He said that we are elected MLAs but even as MLAs we write to the deputy commissioner to sanction funds for this scheme of our constituency but the money is not sanctioned on our request.
The surprising thing is that those who have not won any election, who have not even contested elections from anywhere, and if they have contested, they have lost the elections, in the Congress party there are three to four leaders in each assembly constituency. Sukhu ji has sent their names to the deputy commissioner from the secretariat, that work will be done in the assembly constituency on the orders of these leaders and not on the orders of others. In this way, money is being sanctioned, in a way, this process of insulting the MLAs is going on continuously and we are surprised to see that those Congress people who are not on any government responsibility are attending the meetings of the officials. These leaders are being called to the programs of the officials, they are inaugurating tournaments, they are giving speeches in the annual function of the school and wherever their ministers go on tour, they are not inviting the local MLA, they are not inviting the MLAs of the opposition.
He said that former Chief Ministers Virbhadra Singh and Prof Prem Kumar Dhumal also gave proper place and platform to the MLAs.
Trilok Jamwal, Jeet Ram Katwal, Dr. Janak Raj, Lokendra Kumar, Sanjeev Katwal, Kamaljit Sood, Karan Nanda, Sudeep Mahajan were present in the press conference.
