BJP chargesheets Digvijay govt

The BJP today got its ailing former party president Kushabhau Thakre to unveil a 37-page chargesheet against the Digvijay government. The chargesheet, that has highlighted a host of issues already brought up in the course of this election such as the power situation and the quality of the road network in the state, also focuses strongly on the issue of corruption.

Digvijay had sought to pre-empt this attack by bringing up charges of corruption in land allotment during the two-yr tenure of the Patwa government from 1990 to 1992. But the chargesheet today marshals a number of specific allegations on the corruption front in the 10-year Digvijay government tenure. A total of 22 specific charges of corruption are listed in the chargesheet. These range from allegations of corruption to the tune of Rs 890 crore in state electricity board purchases between 1996 and 2000 to charges that Rs 1,000 crore has been collected for various government transfers.

All this while, it has been pointed out that the BJP hasn’t been able to bring charges of a specific nature on the issue of corruption. As issues like power recede into the background due to the good monsoon, it is the corruption charges that the BJP hopes will see the government on the backfoot.

In addition to highlighting corruption issues, the chargesheet includes much that has already been said several times over in this campaign like starvation deaths, inadequate drought relief work, the state of the roads, the failures on the power front and more general problems related to education and health.