DEHRADUN: The BJP’s organisational wing doesn’t seem to be on the same page with the Trivendra Singh Rawat government on whether the assembly’s proposed budget session should be convened at Gairsain in June as proposed by the previous Congress dispensation.
At the assembly’s budget session held last year, the previous government had passed a resolution that the next government too would convene a similar session at Gairsain. The BJP government though seems undecided.
Cabinet minister Madan Kaushik neither confirmed nor denied whether the budget session would be held there. “We will make an important announcement relating to Gairsain,” he told Hindustan Times. In its poll manifesto, the BJP had promised that, if it came to power, it would declare Gairsain as the state’s summer capital.
The BJP feels that the budget session should be held at Dehradun. “There is no point in holding a budget session at Gairsain as the Vidhan Sabha Bahwan there is still incomplete,” BJP state president Ajay Bhatt said. “In fact, I will ask the government to hold it at the assembly building in Dehradun instead.”
Bhatt said the BJP in its election manifesto made no undertaking that it would hold the budget session at Gairsain. “We, however, made a commitment that our government would declare the hill town as the state’s summer capital and we will fulfil it.”
{{/usCountry}}Bhatt said the BJP in its election manifesto made no undertaking that it would hold the budget session at Gairsain. “We, however, made a commitment that our government would declare the hill town as the state’s summer capital and we will fulfil it.”
{{/usCountry}}As opposition, the BJP had strongly criticised the Congress government for frequently holding assembly sessions at Gairsain. It had criticised the move saying that holding assembly sessions in Gairsain is highly expensive as the entire government has to be moved there. It had also accused the Congress of cashing in on the hill people’s sentiments in the name of holding assembly sessions at Gairsain. .
The opposition Congress criticised the BJP for its stand that budget session shouldn’t be convened at Gairsain. “They have developed an aversion for Gairsain…It is they who complicated that issue,” Congress leader Surendra Kumar said, indirectly accusing the BJP of not declaring Gairsain the state’s permanent capital when it was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000. “It was the BJP that was ruling both at the Centre and the state at that point in time.”