Tuesday, 27 February 2024 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Ravindra Anand on Monday protested against the government outside the Vidhan Sabha building bare chested for not holding the Assembly session in the State’s summer capital Gairsain. He was shouting ‘Uttarakhand Bachao Gairsain Jao’ and tried to take a bath and eat ice cream when the police apprehended him. He was taken to the police lines around noon and released later in the evening.
He held the protest against the BJP-led government and Congress MLAs who did not agree to hold the Assembly session in Gairsain due to cold weather. “I wanted to prove that we are people of a mountainous region and can tolerate the cold. If the ministers and leaders cannot spend a few days in a mountainous village, how do they expect to work for the public? How do they actually plan to minimise migration from mountainous areas when they themselves cannot stay there for a few days? The only purpose of forming Uttarakhand was the development of the mountains but it has been limited to plain districts like Dehradun, Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar,” he said.
Anand stated that several houses are locked in many villages because people migrated to cities due to lack of facilities and successive governments are responsible for it. “Most of the higher level officials, ministers and dignitaries reside in Dehradun while continuing to ignore the needs of mountainous people. The chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and all the MLAs have turned their backs on the mountainous people by refusing to hold the Assembly session in Gairsain. Despite the sacrifice of our statehood activists, Gairsain remains the summer capital only on paper,” he added.
