The Winter Session of Uttarakhand Assembly started amid chilly weather and rains at Bharadisain in Gairsain on Thursday. The political temperature inside the Assembly however soared as Congress members tried to corner the Government on many issues.
As soon as the session started, the leader of Opposition in the State Assembly Indira Hridayesh raised the issue of merger of a large number of villages in municipal bodies and accused the Government of acting arbitrarily on the issue.
She said that elected representatives of three tier Panchayat system are being removed from their positions even though almost two years of their term are remaining. Stating the position of the Government, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prakash Pant said that the Government has full authority to expand the limits of the municipal bodies. This issue was again raised by Hridayesh and Congress MLA and party’s state chief Pritam Singh later in the day in the form of an adjournment motion.
Independent member Pritam Singh Panwar raised the issue of the permanent state capital and demanded that the Government should declare Gairsain as the permanent capital as the issue is associated with the sentiments of the people and is pending for long. Raising a point he said that when winter session of assembly can be convened in the month of December in Gairsain then there should be no problem in accepting it as permanent capital.
In response to a question of MLA Deshraj Karnwal, Prakash Pant said that the State Government had decided to compulsorily implement U -Health card scheme for all its employees. BJP MLA Harbhajan Singh Cheema asked about the number of the unemployed physical education teachers in the state.
In response to a question, the education minister Arvind Pandey clarified that the Government has no intention to close down primary schools but the schools with less number of students and those in one kilometre periphery would be merged. MLA Pritam Singh Panwar inquired about the norms of school buildings and sought details about the number of schools without rooms and toilets. The Education Minister informed the house that there are 15,330 government primary schools with a total of 35,376 toilets in them. He accepted that water connection is lacking in toilets of 1360 primary schools of the state. The Opposition members however were not satisfied with the answers of the Education Minister.
The Congress MLA Govind Singh Kunjwal commented that no satisfactory answer was provided by the education department in all the questions posed by the members. Replying to a question by Tehri MLA Dhan Singh Negi, the cooperative minister Dhan Singh Rawat said that the State has 11 cooperative federations and a total of 185932 litres of the milk is collected daily in the state. Congress MLA Pritam Singh brought adjournment notice and raised the issue of rehabilitation of the residents of Lohari village at Kalsi in Dehradun district, who have been affected by the Lakhwad- Byasi hydro electric project. Similarly MLA Qazi Nizamuddin raised the issue of delay in payment to sugarcane farmers by the sugar mills.
Earlier in the morning folk artists of Garhwal entertained the assembly members and the visitors when they performed traditional Pandav and Chhanchedi folk dances at the entrance of the Vidhan Sabha.