Heard of Gairsain? The sleepy village in Uttarakhand has shot into prominence with the Vidhan Sabha building coming up on a hill. The structure gleams in the sunlight under a fresh spell of snow.
Till a few days ago, the header picture of Chief Minister Harish Rawat’s Twitter page featured the project as an “achievement”, giving the little-known village a rare prominence. Work on the building is currently stalled though.
The Vidhan Sabha complex, with the construction cost having exceeded Rs. 106 crore, is Mr. Rawat’s claim to votes from the region, which falls under the Karnprayag Assembly constituency.
Long-pending demand
Making Gairsain the State capital has been a demand of the Statehood agitators of Uttarakhand for the past 16 years. However, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which tend to engage in a blame game when questioned on Gairsain’s status, have been using the issue for electoral benefit.
In 2002 and 2007, the BJP had won from the Karnprayag seat. In 2012, Anusuya Prasad Maikhuri of the Congress won the seat.
In the upcoming polls, while Mr. Maikhuri has again been named the Congress candidate from Karnprayag, Surendra Singh Negi, who contested as an Independent candidate in the 2012 Assembly polls and lost the seat to Mr. Maikhuri by only 227 votes, is contesting as the BJP candidate this time.
According to Gairsain’s residents, it will be a close contest between the BJP and the Congress. “While Mr. Maikhuri belongs to the Karnprayag region of the seat, Mr. Negi belongs to the Gairsain region. Both will get votes from their respective regions,” Sunil Negi of Devalikhal said. While people said that Mr. Maikhuri had facilitated a lot of development works in the past five years in the field of education, the road network and the Vidhan Sabha’s construction, a pro-BJP sentiment still dominated the area.
“The BJP candidate [Mr Negi] is strong and then there is [Prime Minister Narendra] Modiji who is doing lots of developmental works. We need development in our region,” said Sanjeev Negi, also from Devalikhal.
However, some voters are hopeful that if the Congress had the Vidhan Sabha built in Gairsain, it would also take forward developmental works, were the party given another chance to win from Karnprayag.
While former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna had laid the foundation stone of the Vidhan Sabha building, the work gained pace under Mr. Rawat.
“The Congress government got the Vidhan Sabha constructed here. This has brought the region and its issues into the limelight since many people now visit the place, which otherwise would remain neglected,” said Gairsain’s Meherban Singh.
However, many others feel that the Vidhan Sabha complex is a “waste”. A two-day Assembly session was held at the newly-constructed Vidhan Sabha building last year.
Sundar Singh Rawat, an agricultural worker from Bharadisain said, “We do not have a university, or an institute [that provides professional degrees] here. They [the Congress government] should have constructed an educational institution here instead of the Vidhan Sabha. Of what use is the building for us when an Assembly session that would last for two-three days in one year is the only purpose that the building would serve?”
