Modi’s statement on Himachal Pradesh’s economic health ‘misleading’

A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi blamed the Congress government for ruining the financial health of the state while campaigning in Haryana, Himachal ministers hit back saying the PM’s statement on the economic condition of the state was “misleading and unfortunate”.

Responding to the statement, Industries Minister Harshwardhan Chauhan and Education Minister Rohit Thakur alleged that the state BJP leaders had tricked the Prime Minister into lying by presenting a fake picture of state’s economy to him. “Relying on misleading information fed by the state BJP leaders, the Prime Minister has made unfortunate statements about Himachal’s economy,” the ministers said.

“It would have been better if the BJP leaders had instead made efforts to get the disaster relief fund amounting to around Rs 10,000 crore released for the state from the Centre,” they added.

In a joint statement issued here today, the Cabinet ministers further said the economy of the state was in bad shape because of the wrong policies adopted by the previous BJP government. “Leader of Opposition and former Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur adopted politics of appeasement during the last few months of his regime in order to repeat his government. He introduced freebies and opened over 900 institutions without any budgetary provision or requirement, which resulted in huge burden on state’s exchequer,” the ministers claimed.

They further alleged that all this was done for political gains but the voters outrightly rejected the BJP and gave mandate to serve the people to the Congress. The ministers further said the Congress government inherited a huge financial debt of over Rs 85,000 crore from the BJP government.

“Our government has implemented various reforms to reduce dependency on loans. There is no financial crisis in the state. The government is ushering Himachal Pradesh into becoming self-reliant and a most progressive state in the country,” the ministers said.

They further said that pensioners and employees of various boards and corporations of the state were being given salary and pension on the first day of a month, and the salaries of government employees were not stopped but a few corrective measures were introduced to deal with cash flow mismatch in the treasury.

They further said that the Congress government had undertaken various corrective measures, which had today started yielding positive results. “Efforts are afoot to identify or create additional resources with the potential to increase income of the state. These efforts have resulted in an improvement in the state’s economy by 20 per cent. Additional income of Rs 2,200 crore has been earned within a year due to the corrective measures,” they said.