Stokes, Bragta cross swords over credit for Parala market yard

Kuldeep Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, May 22

The Rs 800-crore modern Parala market yard in the district has become the cause of a slugfest between Horticulture and Irrigation and Public Health Minister Vidya Stokes and BJP leader and former Horticulture Minister Narinder Bragta ahead of the coming apple season.

Stokes trashed Bragta’s charge that the Congress Government was out to run the modern market that the previous BJP government had started.

She said the BJP had laid the foundation stone of the mandi in a haste, without providing a budget, to get political mileage.

When the Congress came to power, it allocated a budget for the mandi and sped up the work. The BJP had announced Rs 100 crore for its construction but gave nothing, she charged.

Stokes said the state marketing board had given Rs 12.76 crore for the Parala Mandi in the first phase, out of which Rs 9.37 crore had been spent on the construction work of the auction yard, shops, electric work, purchase of private land, link road etc till date.

She said the government was giving the market facility at the door steps of the farmers by constructing marketing yards.

The minister said the state government had awarded various works worth Rs 340 lakh to contractors, out of which Rs 230 lakh were being spent on the construction of auction platform and roofs and Rs 110 lakh on cementing the yard.

She said due to the efforts of the government, most of the works had been completed and other facilities such as administrative office, bank, post office, electronic auction hall, lift, cafeteria, travel office, police control room and other basic amenities had been provided.

Bragta was misleading the public and posing as if he was the only benefactor of the apple growers, she alleged. She assured the growers that the Congress would make the Parala Mandi a modern yard so that growers of the entire area could benefit from it.

On the other hand, Bragta alleged that the Congress had double standards on the project because they could not digest the fact that it was started during the BJP regime.

“There is a conspiracy to curtail the ambitious project to mere Rs 12.75 crore rather than keeping it at Rs 800 crore. Why is it not building CAS, processing unit, cold stores for farmers there?”, he questioned.

He claimed that the Congress government was starting the project without putting in place the basic facilities such as banks and electronic auction yard so that it turned out to be a failure.