Himachal CM should resolve employees' issues: Mukesh Agnihotri

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Shimla, February 24

Leader of the Opposition Mukesh Agnihotri today accused Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur of indulging in political dishonesty. He said that the byelection results had shown that the BJP was on its way out and the Chief Minister was just putting a bold face. He was participating in the debate on the Motion of Thanks to the Governor’s Address.

Agnihotri accused the Chief Minister of indulging in political dishonesty, as he had failed to honour the commitments made to people, especially to employees. “You are behaving in a dictatorial manner by threatening employees, which is not fair. You should rather resolve all their grievances, especially the revival of the old pension scheme and the formulation of a policy for outsourced employees,” he added.

CM’s speech, Governor’s Address ‘don’t match’

You are behaving in a dictatorial manner by threatening employees, which is not fair. You should rather resolve all their grievances, especially the revival of the old pension scheme and the formulation of a policy for outsourced employees. It would have been far better if the two documents, the Budget speech of the Chief Minister and the Governor’s Address, had matched. —Mukesh Agnihotri, Leader of opposition

“It would have been far better if the two documents, the Budget speech of the Chief Minister and the Governor’s Address, had matched. There is complete mismatch,” he said. The electorate had understood the gimmick and written off the BJP, he claimed.

He accused the government of pushing the state on the verge of bankruptcy and failing to create employment avenues. “I fail to understand how could you promise jobs to the people of Punjab during the election campaign recently when the figure of unemployed people in Himachal has touched 14 lakh,” he quipped. He said that backdoor appointments were being made in the HP Public Service Commission and the Subordinate Services Selection Board.

Agnihotri demanded a White Paper on Covid handling. “The manner in which funds have been misutilised during the Covid pandemic is surprising. In Una district alone, hotels bills of Rs 60 lakh and taxi bills of Rs 1.25 crore were paid,” he said. He added that the details of the entire state in this regard would bring forth startling facts. He accused the government of causing huge losses to the exchequer by not auctioning liquor vends and allotting them at a nominal rate.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur defended the decision of his government not to auction liquor vends and allot them at a a substantially higher price.

While hitting back at Agnihotri, he said he did not want to dig up past practices during the Congress regime when a Rs 5 crore loss was suffered when a beverages corporation was set up and Rs 175 crore could not be recovered.

Earlier, Rajeev Bindal initiated the debate on the Motion of Thanks to the Governor’s Address. “The four years of the BJP government can be summed up as service and development for every section of society,” he said.

He credited the government with starting several schemes for the welfare of women and enhancing the number of social security pension beneficiaries from 4.314 lakh during the Congress regime to 6.35 lakh now.