Friday, 26 August 2022 | Gajendra Singh Negi
Agnipath anxiety
Cabinet minister Satpal Maharaj deserves kudos for having the gumption to call a spade a spade when he dashed off a letter to the Union Minister of Defence Rajnath Singh and his deputy in which he raised serious questions on the selection process in the ongoing recruitment of Agniveers in Uttarakhand. In the letter Maharaj informed Singh that the aspiring Agniveers are not given the relaxation in minimum height norm given to residents of the State and they are accorded less time than stipulated to complete the mandatory race of 1600 meters. It is no wonder that the letter of Maharaj created red faces in the ruling saffron dispensation in the State with some of them even questioning his credentials and linking the audacity of questioning the pet project of the top duo of the saffron politics with his past association with the Congress party. Keeping the politics aside on the very sensitive issue one should understand that Uttarakhand is probably the only State of the country where someone from almost every household is associated with the armed forces and any deviation in the process of recruitment, deliberate or otherwise is bound to have serious repercussions in the society of the mountainous state sharing international borders with China.
Space constraint
Undeterred by its poor economic health, the government of the Himalayan state should expedite the process of construction of the third assembly building in the Raipur area of Doon valley in view of the overcrowding of employees working in the Uttarakhand assembly. The present assembly building of Dehradun may have sufficient space for the 70 elected MLAs but to accommodate the jumbo secretariat of more than 550 permanent employees, the building is proving to be small due to which some of the employees are forced to receive salaries without even coming to the office. The construction of the third assembly building for the small State becomes even more necessary in the wake of the government lacking required courage to hold sessions in the majestic and enormous assembly building in the remote mountainous Gairsain, the summer -on the paper- capital of Uttarakhand. The cynics are raising concern over the appointments of favour in the assembly wherein the recruitments were done clandestinely and are pointing out that Uttarakhand assembly has more employees than even neighbouring Uttar Pradesh but they should not ignore the grand service the Uttarakhand assembly is rendering by making every possible effort to remove the menace of unemployment in the State.
Mission haywire?
Strange it may sound but the livelihood of a hundred odd contractual workers deployed in a mission with an objective of providing livelihood to the rural poor in the Himalayan state is in jeopardy. These workers deployed in the centrally funded Aajeevika mission of the rural development department mandated to provide effective and efficient platforms to increase the income of rural poor by means of sustainable livelihood enhancements have not received their salaries from the last four months. All their efforts to persuade the Babus of the department to release their emoluments seem to have no effect. It is learnt that the cash strapped department is not in a position to pay its share of 10 per cent in the scheme due to which it is not able to get the centre’s share. The hapless workers now hope that the magnanimous, all powerful Shaktiman fame minister of the department would listen to their grievance and get their salaries released so that their livelihood is sustained.
