Monday, 20 March 2023 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Launching an attack on the State government the Uttarakhand Congress has said that the bureaucracy has become unbridled in the State as the government has lost control over the officers. Interacting with the media persons here on Sunday the leader of opposition (LoP) in the Assembly Yashpal Arya said that in the recently concluded budget session, the chief secretary and some senior officers were not present in the officers gallery when chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami was speaking on the budget which is a violation of the norms. He added that only 41 per cent of the budgetary allocation was spent during the year 2022-23 which speaks volumes of the manner in which the bureaucracy of the State is functioning. Arya said that the State government ignored the constitutional values during the budget session and was not interested in running the house. He said that the session which was originally planned for six days was truncated to only four days.
Arya said that in the meeting of the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) held on March 12, the business of the first two days was decided but on March 14 all the MLAs of the Congress party were suspended and the opposition members were not invited to the BAC meeting held on the day. The LoP claimed that the government unilaterally decided to curtail the session. He said that the rules of procedures and conduct of business of Uttarakhand Assembly mandates that at least 60 sittings of the house should be held in a year. Arya said that the debt on the State has mounted to Rs one lakh crore. This debt was Rs 35,000 crore in the year 2017.
Criticising the state government for lacking in vision, Arya said no provision has been made for generation of income in the budget. He said that the law and order situation in the State has become pathetic. Despite demand from various quarters for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe in the Ankita Bhandari murder case, the government is not ordering the probe which shows that it is trying to shield the culprits, he alleged.
Governor acting unconstitutionally: Pritam
Chakrata MLA and former Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Pritam Singh has said that the governor of Uttarakhand is not functioning in a constitutional manner. He said that the governor only reads the document provided to him by the government and should not add or delete anything in it. Singh said that the governor lieutenant general (retd) Gurmit Singh also addressed the media outside the Assembly after his address inside the house which is also not constitutional.
Speaking on the occasion Chakrata MLA Pritam Singh said that the suspension of the Congress MLAs from the Assembly was unconstitutional. He said that as per the regulations the speaker should have warned the MLAs and asked them to leave the house following which the leader of the house or the Parliamentary Affairs minister should have brought a notice for suspension of the MLAs. He said that last year 16.07 per cent of the budget was allocated for infrastructure which was reduced to 10.55 per cent this year. Similarly the budget of Tourism, PWD and Irrigation departments has also been reduced.
Bhagwanpur MLA Mamta Rakesh, Haridwar Rural MLA Anupama Rawat and Piran Kaliyar MLA Furkan Ahmed were present on the occasion.
