Jaisinghpur BJP MLA wants better roads in his area

Lalit Mohan

An ex-serviceman and a former Punjab National Bank employee, Ravi Dhiman, is a first-time MLA from Jaisinghpur, a reserved Assembly constituency in Kangra district. He starts his day at 6 am like most of the politicians in Himachal meeting people from his constituency who flock to his residence in Alampur village early in the morning. After attending to the people who visit his residence, Dhiman generally has a hectic schedule of attending social functions at invitations from across his Assembly constituency.

“I have been in public dealing in my 26 years’ service in the PNB. So switching onto politics was not that difficult for me,” said Dhiman while talking to The Tribune. 

While Dhiman attends to the public, it falls to his wife Anisha Dhiman to make arrangements for tea for everybody coming to the house, before she leaves for the government school in which she is working as a teacher.

Besides his wife, son Preetish Dhiman and 92-year-old father are the other family members living with the Jaisinghpur MLA. Dhiman says he was blessed to have his nonagenarian father around him. His son Preetish looks after the family timber business. His daughter Pratibha Dhiman was married.

Soft-spoken Dhiman is quite popular among his constituents because he listens to their problems patiently and tries to find solutions immediately, taking up matter with the local and the district administration.

He said his constituency, Jaisinghpur, had lagged behind in development. Many areas were still bereft of basic infrastructure such as roads, drinking water and educational institutions. Even the main roads leading from Palampur to Jaisinghpur and Andretta were in a bad shape because the Congress had ignored the area. “My thrust is on improving the road conditions and opening up more educational institutes in my constituency,” he said.

He further said a lot of illegal mining had been going on in his constituency in the Beas river bed. Being a public representative, it was his duty to check this illegal practice in his area, he said. I have urged the officers concerned to take strong action against those indulging in illegal mining, Dhiman said.

Dhiman had contested the 2012 Assembly elections as an Independent after being denied the party ticket by the BJP. However, this time, the BJP gave Dhiman the party ticket and he defeated the Congress candidate, Yadwinder Goma, by a margin of more than 7,000 votes.