Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat (File)
While the Uttarakhand government is mulling on whether or not to declare Gairsain, a village in Chamoli district, as the state’s permanent capital, the reply to an RTI query has revealed that the state government spent Rs 98.69 lakh in a two-day state assembly session that was conducted at Gairsain on December 7 and 8, last year.
Replying to the RTI application filed by one Haldwani-based RTI activist Gurvinder Singh Chadha, a letter from the Dehradun-based state assembly administration dated February 28 revealed that a total of Rs 1.95 crore was spent between 2014 and 2017 in conducting assembly sessions at Gairsain. Of the Rs 1.95 crore, Rs 96.2 lakh was spent by the previous Congress government between 2014 and 2016, but an amount exceeding Congress’s three-year spending was spent in the two-day assembly session by the BJP government in December, last year.
The previous Congress government started holding assembly sessions at Gairsain in 2014 when Rs 57.1 crore was spent on a three-day session that was held between June 9 and 11. In the year 2015, Rs 2.8 lakh was spent on the two-day assembly session in Gairsain held on November 2 and 3. In the year 2016 Rs 36.3 lakh was spent, while Rs 98.7 lakh was spent in the 2017 assembly session held on December 7 and 8.
Uttarakhand has a 71-member assembly. While Chadha had also asked about the number of MLAs, who attended the assembly sessions at Gairsain in the past years, the reply to the RTI application did not answer the query. Speaking to The Indian Express, Chadha said, “Since the RTI reply denied information on the MLAs who attended the Gairsain assembly sessions, we won’t know on how many MLAs the massive funds were spent.”
Senior Congress leader who is the leader of Opposition in the state assembly, Indira Hridayesh, said to The Indian Express, “We (Congress) tried to develop the Gairsain assembly building to make it into a permanent structure, and we spent money accordingly and intelligently. However, the BJP is not spending money to complete the construction work at Gairsain and develop it so that the excess expenditure to cater to the two-three day assembly sessions can be reduced.”
The former Congress government had initiated the holding of state assembly sessions at Gairsain. The construction of the ‘Vidhan Sabha complex at Gairsain’, which includes the main assembly building along with residential quarters for MLAs, had begun under former Chief Minister Harish Rawat.
The construction cost of the complex had exceeded Rs 106 crore under the previous Congress government. In December, last year, the BJP government had allotted Rs 10 crore for the construction of the assembly building at Gairsain.
A budget session of the state assembly is scheduled to be held at Gairsain between March 20 and March 28.
State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prakash Pant said to The Indian Express, “A high amount was spent (in the December assembly session at Gairsain) because we had to put in a lot of money on making temporary arrangements for the two-day session. Our focus now is towards building a permanent set up that could reduce future costs of holding assembly sessions at Gairsain.”
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