Dehra to host state-level I-Day function after 39 yrs

Tribune News Service

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Dharamsala, August 14

Dehra is all set to host the state-level Independence Day function tomorrow after 39 years. Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu will unfurl the national flag at the Saheed Bhubnesh Dogra stadium there.

It was in 1985 when the state-level Independence Day function was organised in Dehra when Viplove Thakur, former HPCC president, represented it. Dehra SDM Shilpi Bekta today said that besides presiding over the Independence Day function, the Chief Minister would also lay the foundation stone of PWD roads in the Dehra Assembly segment. He would also launch a mobile phone application of the Excise Department.

Dehra was in the news recently when Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur won the seat in the recent Assembly byelections. The area, which has been a political backwater for the past two decades, is now the hub of political activity. Besides the Chief Minister, two MLAs holding Cabinet ranks, namely Chairman of the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation RS Bali and Bhawani Singh Pathania, would also attend the function.

Sources said that the Chief Minister may announce a police district in Dehra. He had promised to set up a police district and the office of the Superintending Engineer, PWD, in the Assembly segment while campaigning for the byelections. The Kangra police has already sent a proposal to their headquarters for the inclusion of the Jawalamukhi, Dehra and Jaswan Pragpur Assembly segments in the prosposed Dehra police district.

As Kamlesh represents Dehra, the residents of the area hope that their long-pending demands will be fulfilled. Their demands include the construction of roads in the constituency, as many areas of Dehra, which fall in the Pong Dam Wildlife Sanctuary jurisdiction, still don’t have pucca roads.

Many landless Pong Dam oustees are awaiting the allocation of land on which they have their houses transferred in their names. These people are landless farm labourers residing on village common land. They had encroached on forestland after the government in 1980 decided to convert the entire common land in Himachal to forestland.