Punish BJP for ignoring Kangra: Cong leaders

Tribune News Service
Dharamsala, October 19

Former minister GS Bali said today that the BJP should be punished for ignoring Kangra. He was addressing a press conference here, in which several senior leaders of the Congress were present.

Those present at the conference included former Union minister Chandresh Kumari, Rajya Sabha member Viplove Thakur, former HPCC president Sukhwinder Sukhu, former minister Thakur Singh Bharmouri, Congress MLA from Una Satpal Raizada, former MLA and general secretary of the HPCC Ajay Mahajan, former MLA Rajesh Dharmani and Congress co in charge Gurkeerat Singh Kotli. Congress candidate from Dharamsala Vijay Inder Karan was also present at the event.

Former minister and AICC secretary Sudhir Sharma was not present as he was holding a separate meeting of booth-level workers at his residence in Dharamsala.

Bali alleged that the state government was about to finish two years in power. “What projects this government has allotted to Kangra district and other lower areas of Himachal in the last two years? It should come out,” he said. Listing the achievements of the Congress government, he said the previous government had given a government engineering college, a college of architecture, college of hotel management, Smart City Dharamsala project and 13 new government colleges to Kangra district. “The present BJP government has not given a single new project to Dharamsala. In fact, it has closed down or halted many projects in Kangra and other lower regions of Himachal,” said Bali.

He alleged that the BJP was seeking votes by raking up the emotions of people on various issues.

He also flayed the state government for its decision to impose GST on the home stay project. The former minister said the Congress government had encouraged the Home Stay Scheme so that people living in rural areas could be self-employed. “The state government had imposed GST on home stays on plea that it would generate more revenue for the state. However, there was no GST applied on rooms being sold at less than Rs 1,000 per day. Since most of the home stays are selling their rooms at less than Rs 1,000 per day, the GST will not generate any revenue for the state. It will just create more paperwork for rural people running home stays,” he said.

Bali also said that the state government was projecting the forthcoming investors’ meet as its main achievement in the last two years. However, local investors were a harassed lot, he said.