Himachal Pradesh’s CM Virbhadra Singh. (Express Photo)
Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday announced the name of Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh as the party’s chief ministerial candidate. Addressing a rally at Paddal ground Gandhi said that Virbhadra Singh, 83, has ensured uniform development of the entire hill state and was confident that the Congress party would retain power, PTI reported. He also hit out at PM Narendra Modi n the issue of unemployment, demonetisation and “hasty” implementation of Goods and Service Tax(GST).
With his announcement, Gandhi kicked off the campaign in poll-bound Himachal Pradesh. Gandhi was addressing the he “Vijay se Vikas ki Aur” rally when he said, ” Virbhadra Singhji, You became chief minister six times and I assure that you would become chief minister for the seventh time also and the entire Congress party stands behind you).” This comes four days after a BJP rally at Bilaspur that was addressed by the prime minister.
Taking a dig at PM Modi on the issue of unemployment, Gandhi said that the NDA government failed to keep its promise of providing jobs to 2 crore people. “And the ground situation is that 30,000 job seekers are being added every 24 hours but only 450 persons are getting jobs per day while our competitor China is giving jobs to 50,000 persons every day, ” he said. He blamed demonetisation to have led a drop in GDP which has also affected the common man adversely. Addressing the rally, Virbhadra Singh said that his government ensured uniform development without any other consideration and said that development would be the main election plank of the party in the upcoming assembly polls.
(With Agency Input)
