Ministers flay Nadda, Hamirpur MP for not securing central aid for state

Industries Minister Harshwardhan Chauhan and Public Works Department Minister Vikramaditya Singh here today condemned national BJP president JP Nadda and Hamirpur MP Anurag Thakur for their failure to secure ‘rightful’ financial support for Himachal Pradesh from the Central Government.

The ministers, in a joint statement, questioned the BJP leaders when would the Central Government provide funds that it owed to the state. They said that since the state government restored the Old Pension Scheme (OPS) for its 1.36 lakh employees, the BJP leaders had been conspiring against it. Their “Operation Lotus” to grab power had failed miserably, they alleged.

The duo asked Nadda to speak on facts rather than trying to create sensation. “The Central Government is withholding nearly Rs 10,000 crore of the employees’ contribution towards the National Pension Scheme (NPS). As the state government had implemented the OPS, it was the responsibility of the Union Government to return the funds of the employees contributed towards the NPS but it was withholding the money deliberately,” they added.

The ministers pointed out various restrictions imposed by the Central Government on Himachal, limiting its ability to borrow funds. They criticised the lack of a Rs 1,780 crore grant for the implementation of the OPS and questioned the BJP leaders on the measures taken to remove the constraints.

They said that during the previous BJP government, freebies amounting to Rs 5,000 crore were provided in the last six months of Jai Ram Thakur’s tenure, overburdening the state treasury. They criticised the BJP for neglecting the disaster relief fund and said that the Centre had not released the relief amount as per the Post Disaster Need Assessment claims submitted by the state.

The ministers claimed, “The Congress government has taken proactive steps to address the rain disaster’s impact by allocating Rs 4,500 crore from its own resources to rebuild over 23,000 damaged houses and give relief to the affected people. The BJP leaders walked out of the state Assembly rather than supporting the claim of disaster relief funds from the Central Government and getting the rain tragedy declared as a national disaster.”