Cong to corner U'khand govt over failure to keep commitments

Opposition Congress in Uttarakhand is preparing to corner the BJP government in the state over its alleged failure to honour its commitments, including a CBI probe into the NH-74 scam and the passage of the Lokayukta bill, when the forthcoming budget session of the state Assembly gets underway on March 20. The decision to attack the government on the floor of the House was taken at a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party, chaired by Leader of Opposition Indira Hridayesh, yesterday. "Shying away from an investigation into the NH-74 scam by the apex agency, despite the chief minister stating in the House earlier that a CBI probe will be ordered into it, is not acceptable.

We will raise the issue aggressively in the House during the budget session," Hridayesh said. It also went against the state government's "much-hyped" policy of "zero tolerance" to corruption, she added. A special investigation team (SIT), constituted by the state government, is currently probing the scam. The inordinate delay in the passage of the Lokayukta bill and alleged financial mismanagement of the state government would be the other issues to be raised by the opposition, Hridayesh said. The passage of the Lokayukta bill is still awaited in Uttarakhand, in spite of it being a major commitment of the BJP in its vision document for the 2017 state Assembly polls. "The fate of the Lokayukta bill hangs fire, despite the fact that the opposition is entirely with the government over constituting the anti-corruption body," Hridayesh said. Charging the BJP regime with failure in fiscal management, she said for the first time, the state government had to take loan to pay salaries to its employees and still, many of them in various departments were yet to get their dues for months.

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