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Samajwadi Party chief hopeful of bagging seats
The
Big Picture
Kaladhungi to witness tough, multi-cornered contest
Constituency
Watch
Women voters exhorted to vote for Cong
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BJP promoting disparity between hills and
Almora, January 21 “The BJP is responsible for widespread corruption in every nook and corner of the state. It was due to corruption that the BJP was forced to change its Chief Minister,” the Congress president said in her second election rally in the state in the run-up to the January 30 Assembly poll. BS Khanduri took over as Chief Minister from Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank in September last year in an apparent move by the BJP to lift its sagging image following graft allegations against the government. Sonia struck a chord with the people of this ‘cultural city’ and went on to further consolidate the tempo set by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a day before at Rudrapur while campaigning for Congress candidates from Kumaon. Sonia criticised the BJP government in the state for having ignored the common people and bringing the development process initiated by the Congress to a standstill. Addressing a capacity crowd at the Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Stadium here, she said Jawaharlal Nehru had spend several years of his life in the Almora jail. “Our family has strong ties with Almora,” she said amid a thunderous applause. She added Almora was a place of immense importance as people like Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi had been associated with it and poet Sumitra Nandan Pant was born here. She said, ”Things have gone from bad to worse for the people and the future of the youth is dark.” She added, “The hill districts of the state are being provided with only 13 per cent of power. Do they think the people living here can do with light of the sun and the moon?” “They have been practising divisive politics and promoting disparities between hills and plains,” she said. Sonia accused the BJP government of not promoting new industries in the state and said it had destroyed whatever industry existed already. “Nothing is being done to check the migration of the youth. Farmers are in trouble and women are being ignored,” she said and pointed out that no attempts had been made to fill posts meant for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. “It is clear that the BJP ignored the interests of the people and the state. A large number of funds have been given by the Centre to the state, which the BJP has not used,” she said. Sonia claimed that the Congress had always given a preferential treatment to Uttarakhand, which had lagged behind in development. She said the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Roorkee, Institute of Hotel Management, Gobind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology at Pantnagar and the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) at Rishikesh were established due to the efforts of the Congress. “The Congress had approved a medical college and a hospital in Almora which the BJP government totally ignored,” she said. She also pointed towards the projects like starting of a horticultural training centre near Ranikhet and an agriculture research institute that have been mentioned in the party manifesto. She concluded her speech saying, “We deliver what we promise.”
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Samajwadi Party chief hopeful of bagging seats
Dehradun, January 21 Party president Vinod Barthwal does not blame the supposed non-performance of the party for not winning even one seat, but the malicious campaign started by other political parties accusing the SP of the ‘unfortunate’ Muzaffarnagar violence. He said the BJP created a niche in the state by repeatedly claiming that it was the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government at the Centre which made the vision of the state a reality. He, however, said despite all odds the SP should not be underestimated. “Politics is mathematics, a game of sheer numbers and also an experiment. He said this time the party had fielded some strong candidates. None of them had a dubious or criminal background, he averred. About the candidates, Barthwal said Rajender Prashar was contesting from Haridwar, Dr JP Nautiyal from Dhanaulti, Gulfam Ali from Sahaspur and Aziz Kureshi was fighting the elections from Kashipur. Gulfam Ali had garnered 22,000 votes in the last Assembly elections and made a sizeable dent in the BJP-Congress vote bank. He said the party was betting on its stronghold in Haridwar, US Nagar and Dehradun. Barthwal, who is fighting from the Raipur seat, appeared relaxed. He said he was not worried as he had been consistently working in his constituency. He ridiculed those who left the party to join the BJP. “Those who broke away from the SP were not treated well by the
BJP.”
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The Big Picture
Dehradun, January 21 Equally, in Uttarkashi’s remote villages of Bevra and Manjhi, a father carrying his sick child on his shoulder to a dispensary run by a pharmacist for a skin ailment is a common sight. This, then, is the distance that the state health sector has travelled since 2002. Without a doubt, there has been a lot of improvement in the health sector since the creation of the state, but the progress seems slow and at times debilitating due to manpower crisis. Newly upgraded Primary Health Centres and First Referral Health Units continue to wait for doctors. Since the creation of the state, only 205 new doctors have been recruited, bringing the government’s efforts towards building infrastructure to a naught. Shortage of Doctors
There is a shortage of 1,185 doctors in the state against the 2,202 sanctioned posts of senior medical officers and medical officers falling in different grades. The problem is acute in the hilly areas. Against 185 sanctioned posts of the senior medical officers (specialist cadre), 141 posts are vacant and only 44 posts of senior medical officers have been filled. In the senior-medical officers’ category (non-specialist), against 205 sanctioned posts, 193 are lying vacant. Against the requirement of 316 medical officers grade 1 (specialist cadre), 162 medical officers are working and there is a shortage of 154 doctors. “The doctors are unwilling to go to the hills due to lack of facilities. Though the government has been giving financial incentives to the doctors in the remote areas, these have been spurned by the doctors,” said health minister Banshidhar Bhagat. Public Private
Partnership
A serious shortage of trained medical professional in the rural areas and concentration in the urban areas has forced the patients to travel several kilometres to Dehradun. The staff shortage forced the government to go for public-private partnership in the area of diagnostic, MRI, cardiology and nephrology centers, but privatisation cannot be a panacea for all ills as the government cannot wash it’s hands off from creating infrastructure and manpower,” said Dr S Pal, former Director-General, Health. However, for the first time, the 108 Emergency services being run by the government with GVK EMRI on public private partnership faced problems as the staff began demanding absorption in the government services. “In its bid to tide over manpower crunch, the government has increasingly gone for privatisation and hired contractual staff to run the services but the strike by the 108 staff has again shown that the health services being run under the public-private mode can also be affected by strikes,” said Dr Pal. Focus on Medical Colleges
In its efforts towards increasing the human resource development, the government has also focused on opening medical colleges in the state at Rudrapur, Almora and Dehradun. “The Srinagar Medical College and the Haldwani Medical College are already running. We have cleared proposals for three more colleges with the hope that we would be able to get doctors who have already signed bonds to work in the state. This would take time but it is a long-term plan and would yield results in the coming years,” said Vinita Kumar, principal secretary, Health. |
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BJP stalwart Jain in triangular contest in Roorkee
Having a total of 94,972 voters, including 43,856 women, the constituency is totally plain and the smallest in Haridwar district. Thirteen candidates are in the fray with 85 per cent of voters falling in the urban region. During the last two Assembly elections since Uttaranchal was carved out of Uttar Pradesh as a separate state, Roorkee had been a fortress of the BJP, as party candidate Suresh Chand Jain had won from the seat consecutively in 2002 and 2007. In 2007, Jain polled 41.82 per cent of votes defeating Congress candidate Furkan Ahmed while in the last elections he defeated Congress candidate Manohar Lal Sharma. Notably, in this elections the Congress has fielded Furkan Ahmed from Piran Kaliyar while Manohar Lal Sharma is contesting as an Independent candidate after he was denied ticket by the Congress. Hence, if Jain wins, he will have a hat-trick of victories from the seat. But this time the Congress has fielded a dynamic candidate in Pradeep Batra, who is the chairman of the Roorkee Municipal |Corporation. Taking into consideration Batra’s popular image among the youth and development-oriented working, Haridwar MP Harish Rawat especially lobbied for him for ticket. Development as well as making Roorkee a separate district is high on Batra’s agenda, which is showing an impact on the voters. The recent rally of Congress president Sonia Gandhi had also generated some interest in the party in the region. The BSP has fielded Dr Nayar Kazmi, a popular face, who is relying on the social engineering formula and charisma of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati. Mayawati is scheduled to address a rally in his favour in Roorkee on January 23. Independent candidate Manohar Lal Sharma has made the contest triangular. A veteran Congress leader till he was denied ticket,
Manohar Lal Sharma has a good rapport with the people and is likely to affect the
Congress vote bank, benefiting the BJP. Other prominent candidate in the fray is Munesh Tyagi of the Samajwadi Party, while Bharat Bhushan Kalra, another Independent candidate, is disturbing the calculations of all
major candidates. Besides the separate district status, there are the issues of roads, a drainage system, better civic facilities and a good railway station and a bus station in the city.
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Khanduri confident of BJP’s return to power
Berinag (Pithoragarh),
January 21 Khanduri was addressing a public meeting at Berinag during his Kumoan tour to campaign for BJP candidates. He accused the Congress of being confused and unclear in taking decisions.
“During the past five years of its government, the BJP has taken historic decisions in the interest of poor people. Besides giving transparent administration, we have made the ration for the poor cheap under the Atal Khadyan Yojana,” said Khanduri. The Chief Minister said because of corruption
during the Congress rule, the people of the state voted the BJP to
power. |
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Kaladhungi to witness tough, multi-cornered contest
The BJP has fielded senior party leader and Cabinet minister Bansidhar Bhagat from the seat. Bhagat has moved here after having announced that he was not interested in contesting elections for another term from the Haldwani seat. But his presence here has been taken with a pinch of salt by other party leaders like Nainital MLA Kharak Singh Bora, who has been working hard to secure the party ticket from this seat. The dilemma of the BJP can be gauged from the fact that it finalised the candidate for the seat in the last list. The situation is not good even in the Congress which has fielded Prakash Joshi from the seat. Though Joshi claims that he belongs to the region and has been working here for sometime, he is still being looked upon as an outsider who has “para-trooped” from Delhi owing to his closeness to party general secretary Rahul Gandhi. As the Gandhi family is showing interest in the seat, it has become a prestige issue for the Congress to win from here. But party rebel Mahesh Sharma has also filed nomination papers from the seat. Sharma has been politically active in the area for long and has been seeking the party ticket from Kaladhungi. The presence of Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (Progressive) heavyweight Narayan Singh Jantwal has made the contest all the more interesting. Jantwal is learnt to have fared very well from the area in the 2002 Assembly elections. Though the fortunes of the UKD (P) are not bright, Jantwal’s personal reputation is his main asset. The BSP has fielded Deewan Singh Bisht from the seat. It had announced Bisht’s candidature well in advance and had a head start in campaigning. Another candidate with a strong base in the area is Bupender Singh “Bhaijee”, who is contesting the elections as an Independent candidate. Observers say the seat is all set to witness a multi-cornered contest and anyone could emerge victorious. Kaladhungi’s proximity to Ramnagar, Haldwani and Nainital makes it better placed in terms of facilities as compared to several other constituencies. The core issues here are speeding up development in terms of better infrastructure, food processing units, centres of higher education and better health facilities.
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Constituency
Watch
The Lohaghat seat has 90,561 voters, including 43,229 women. The nearly 14,000 voters of the Ladhia valley will vote for the first time in Lohaghat as the area has been included in the constituency after the delimitation of Assembly seats in the state. Congress candidate and former minister Mahendra Singh Mahra has much to say about his achievements in the last 10 years as MLA from Lohaghat, including his tenure as Agriculture Minister in the ND Tiwari government from 2002 to 2007. “My biggest achievement is to covert the Kham land of Lohaghat town into government land, enabling the people to apply for freehold,” said Mahra. He added that during his tenure as Agriculture Minister the Rs 405-crore watershed programme for 19 blocks of Almora, Pithoragarh and Champawat districts, including three blocks of his constituency, was granted and the poor of these blocks were benefited from the poverty alleviation programmes. “I could also make roads in villages from the Krishi Mandi fund during the last 10 years and created three administrative units in the area and four ITIs, besides a number of schools,” said Mahra. But the BJP candidate, Puran Fartiyal, who came into limelight after he launched a campaign to distribute quilts to poor villagers last winter. “I distributed more than 2,500 quilts among the poor of the Lohaghat, Barakot and Pati blocks. This led political parties to contact me. I joined the BJP as it is a clean party led by an able leader, BC Khanduri,” he said. Fartiyal said the people of Lohaghat wanted a change this time. “Moreover, the candidate who is representing them is an outsider and has been dumped on them from Pithoragarh,” he said. Fartiyal claimed that the youth of the area were supporting him as they had been neglected by Mahra. Govind Pandey is contesting on a BSP ticket from the seat. Pandey, who is not well known in the area, is banking mainly on the image of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati. He says the people are out to teach a lesson to both Congress and BJP this time. “The people of Lohaghat are in a mood to repay the debt of Bahenji, as the district was created by Mayawati,” says Pandey. The voters of Lohaghat want development as they believe the BJP government did not allow various projects in the area as it was represented by a Congress MLA. “The drinking water problem in Lohaghat town and the villages of Barakot is still unresolved as despite Mahar’s efforts the BJP government ignored it during the last five years. Schools in the Barakot and Lohaghat blocks have been without teachers and the area has been facing a problem of low voltage,” says Manoj Samant, pradhan of Singda village of the Barakot block. |
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Women voters exhorted to vote for Cong
Dehradun, January 21 Verma, who is on a tour of the state, while addressing a press conference said only the Congress could provide a stable and development-oriented government in the state. Verma, who hails from the neighbouring state of Himachal Pradesh, said the Congress had given adequate representation to the women candidates. She hoped that women voters would vote for the Congress that could provide clean, stable and corruption-free and development-oriented government in the state. She further said that each and every promise of the party would be kept after the formation of the Congress government in the state. Verma announced that Mamta Bhupesh would be the in charge of the Garhwal region from the Mahila Congress while Pushpa Chauhan would work in the Haridwar region. Asima Mahananda would coordinate with Tehri Garhwal MP Vijay Bahuguna in the Tehri
region.
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Dehradun, January 21
Haridwar, January 21
Nainital, January 21
Pithoragarh, January 21
“In a repeat of history, there is a direct fight between two historical warring groups of the Chand regime of the mid era as the Mahras and the Fartiyals were the main rivals in the court of the Chand rulers before the kingdom shifted to Almora in 1665 AD,” said Devendra Oli, a researcher of Kumoan history.