Winter Session starts on a stormy note

PCC president Kaul Singh and other Congress leaders such as Mukesh Agnihotri reacted sharply to the charges,disrupting the House proceedings.

Though Speaker Tulsi Ram’s intervention helped restore order,but Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal later declared in the House that the government had decided to send legal notices to CLP leader Vidya Stokes and PCC president Kaul Singh Thakur for having “levelled unsubstantiated charges of illegal land deals”.

Dhumal,who was replying to a resolution moved by two MLAs Rakesh Pathania and Suresh Bhardwaj,tried to turn the tables on the Congress for having granted a large number of permissions for sale of land to outsiders during its regime. “The BJP government granted only 1,243 permissions for land purchase,a majority of it (485) in Solan because of industrial investments,but the Congress created a record by allowing 2,068 cases,” he said,telling Stokes and Kaul Singh that he would slap legal notices on the two.

The CM also ridiculed the Congress charges that ruling party MLAs should not “mislead” the people on the government’s achievements on development activities in Himachal. He asserted that after 13th Finance Commission report and withdrawal of the Central industrial package,the state had been rather put in a serious spot on the fiscal front.

The resolution had been moved to congratulate the CM and thank the people and government employees because Himachal got the “overall best state award”,given by a media group,for the first time. The Congress led by Stokes and Gangu Ram Musafir contested the justification of such a resolution and asserted that the MLAs’ claim about the “first-time” award was misleading.

Rejecting their arguments,Randhir Sharma of the BJP took on the CLP leader,levelling charges of corruption and patronage to land mafia. Daring the party to come out with sufficient proofs to substantiate the charges,he added: “The corruption is at the Centre where scams like 2G Spectrum and CWG have already exposed the government.” The statement triggered a chain of protests.

The order was restored only after Dhumal intervened and asked Speaker Tulsi Ram to examine the House records and delete unparliamentary words,if any.

In his reply later,Dhumal spoke on the state government’s achievements in different fields — which were evaluated for conferring the award. He dismissed the claims made by Stokes and Musafir about similar awards having already been given to the previous government.