Former Chief Minister Jai RamThakur has criticized Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu for allegedly using the traditional Shivratri festival for launching an attack on his political rivals.
Talking to media persons here on Saturday he said, ” There always has been a tradition to celebrate the Shivratri festival as a people’s festival as a large number of people participate in it, but the CM used the inaugural function to criticize his political rivals breaking the past tradition by giving political colour to the festival.”
He said, “This was the first Shivratri of the new government but the CM made statements beyond expectations; even Congress flags were put during the festival breaking old age tradition; instead of speaking on development he chose to attack his opponents,” he added.
Telling about budgetary provision made by the previous government in regard to Shiv Dham Thakur said, “The CM made a wrong statement about non allocation of budget for building Shiv Dham at Mandi; this has been one of our dream project which would be constructed with aid from the Asian Development Bank and Rs 50 crore were allocated for first phase of this project which is to be built in three phases with Rs 200 crore.”
He said, “The new government has agreed to spend Rs 130 crore for the second phase of the project on my insistence and I hope the CM will pursue this project seriously.”
Thakur said , “ The previous government had sought two airport projects i.e. for Balh and Kangra from the Central government to better connectivity in the hilly state and Rs 1000 crore was allocated in the state budget for the Balh airport ; many technical reports have been cleared and land acquisition for the project is likely to begin soon.”
He accused, “The Congress government is finding excuses to close down Sardar Patel University Mandi and has cancelled deputation of several faculty members in the university.”
Thakur said, “The state government is trying to close down many institutions opened by the previous government by stopping funds for these but BJP would be forced to give a call for statewide Bandh and raise these issues in the coming Assembly session.”