Dharamsala, November 3
The Kangra district BJP president and MLA from Baijnath, Mr Dulo Ram, and the Chairman of Khadi Board and MLA from Sullah, Mr Vipin Singh Parmar, have alleged that the Delimitation Commission has discriminated against Kangra and justice has been denied to the people of the largest district.

They claimed that the scrapping of one constituency will deprive Kangra of more than Rs 30 crore worth of development funds annually and also of more than 36 government institutions because development funds and opening of new institutions in the state is on the basis of Vidhan Sabha constituencies.

Talking to mediapersons, the two MLAs alleged that Kangra had also been discriminated against with regard to the national programme of family planning.

Mr Dulo Ram said Kangra had an extra population of 45,000 and thus there is no justification in the scrapping of Sullah constituency when the Delimitation Commission had granted a constituency to Lahaul-Spiti with a population of only 31,000 .

Mr Vipin Singh Parmar said the national norms had been disregarded when the adjoining constituencies of Baijnath and Panchrukhi were proposed as reserved in Kangra.

Advocating the deferment of the implementation of the recommendations of the Delimitation Commission the two BJP MLAs asserted that if elections in Jammu and Kashmir and Gujarat could be held without the delimitation of constituencies then why not in Himachal Pradesh. They also claimed that the work of delimitation in three states of North-East had not started where elections were to be held along with Himachal.

SOLAN: Welcoming the proposal of the Delimitation Commission to increase the number of reserve constituencies from the present 16 to 17 in Himachal the state general secretary of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe cell of the Congress, Mr Suresh Kumar, stated here that the number could go up to 18 or even more if the census of 2001 was taken into consideration.