Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Wednesday launched the 'Sarkar Gaon Ke Dwaar' program, aimed at solving the problems of the people at their doorsteps.
He launched the program, to reach out to people in the field ahead of Like Sabha polls, at Galore in his home constituency in Hamirpur district.
As many as 87 complaints were received during the program. He directed to upload all these complaints on the Chief Minister Helpline.
The government is organising the program across the state to make people aware of the various policies, programmes and achievements of the state government during the last year.
The ministers and MLAs would also visit villages to inform people about the public welfare schemes being implemented so that the people could derive maximum benefits from them.
Considering that about 90 per cent of the population of the state resides in villages, Sukhu said efforts would be made to strengthen the village economy in the coming budget.
"The vision of prosperous Himachal will be realised only when our villages become self-reliant", he said, adding that a target has been set to make Himachal the most prosperous state of the country in the next 10 years.
He said huge debt was inherited due to excessive borrowings and poor fiscal mismanagement of funds by the previous BJP government. " Congress is not to be blamed for this. The state is taking loans just to repay the interests that piled up due to excessive loans taken by the previous BJP government," he said.
He said the Congress government was well aware of this enormous debt, yet fulfilling the promise made to the employees. "We restored the OPS ( Old Pension Scheme) in the very first cabinet as promised in our election manifesto", he reiterated. He said a request was made to the Central government to release Rs 9000 crore of NPS ( New Pension Scheme) but the Union Government has not heeded the request.
Perhaps the Central government is not in favour of restoring the OPS to the state employees, he said.
He said the BJP was anti-Hamachal as it did not stand with the disaster-affected people of the state. " The state had to face the biggest natural calamity last year.
As many as 3,000 houses were destroyed and 13,000 houses in the state were partially damaged. Despite limited resources, the state government has taken up the task of rehabilitating the disaster affected," he said.
He said the government announced a special relief package of Rs 4500 crore despite the financial crunch and the government increased the compensation package manifold by making changes in the relief manual.
The Chief Minister said that amidst the disaster the BJP leaders kept demanding to call the Assembly session but they did not support the resolution to provide a special relief package to Himachal on the lines of Bhuj and Kedarnath.
He said, 'I want to ask the MPs and State BJP leaders, why they didn't persuade the Prime Minister and Union Home Minister to release a special relief package for the State during the disaster.
"If the Central Government has given any special economic package to Himachal Pradesh in connection with the disaster, then the BJP leaders should provide details of the same", he said. He said that when a resolution was brought in the Assembly to declare the natural calamity in Himachal Pradesh as a 'National Disaster', the BJP MLAs opposed it ignoring the sorrow of the people of the State.
He said that the central government undertakings were opposing the water cess as levied by the state government on its hydel projects. Along with this, Rs 4300 crore of Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) was lying with the Central Government for many years which has not been released yet. He said the interests of Himachal Pradesh were not kept in mind and the previous BJP government gave Luhri, Sunni and Dhaula-Siddh hydropower projects to SJVN on easy terms, he said.
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