Uttarakhand Minister for Social Welfare Surendra Rakesh walked out of a high-level review meeting in a huff, saying aloud that the bureaucracy wasn't under the control of the Vijay Bahuguna government.
“The agenda of this meeting to review the scheduled castes/tribes sub-plan had been given a month ago. Despite this, only a handful of Secretaries from the 32 departments turned up, and none of the Principal Secretaries empowered to quickly implement orders, came. What does this mean?” asked Mr. Rakesh, a Minister from the Bahujan Samaj Party.
Quick to react, Chief Secretary Alok Jain issued a circular, asking officials to take review meetings of Ministers seriously.
Similarly, Harish Dhami, Congress MLA from Dharchula, threatened to resign if he was to be cold-shouldered by the Chief Minister, just because he was close to Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and Agriculture Harish Rawat.
According to Mr. Dhami, Mr. Bahuguna avoided Dharchula during his recent visit to the area.
“I was denied an appointment with the Chief Minister, and when I finally caught up with him with a file containing problems of Dharchula, Mr. Bahuguna did take it, but left the file in the Circuit House,” Mr. Dhami alleged, saying this indicated the narrow-minded politics in the State.
He threatened to attend the coming Vidhan Sabha session wearing a black badge. “If that doesn't get justice to my constituents either, I will resign from the legislature,” he said.
Sources close to Mr. Bahuguna said that Mr. Dhami's file had been brought to Dehradun and action would be taken soon.
