Gajendra Singh Negi | Dehradun
Bar-bomb
The penchant of former MLA of Khanpur, Pranav Singh Champion for controversies never subsides, keeping the political cauldron of the Himalayan State shimmering. His latest salvo which had targeted the Congress has left the State presidents of both Congress and BJP embarrassed. While reacting to a barb thrown at him by the Congress, Champion, the perpetual naughty boy of Uttarakhand’s politics, claimed that in 2002, Ganesh Godiyal, then a political greenhorn and first- time MLA, had thrown a party for some MLAs of Uttarakhand near his Mumbai residence in which bar dancers had performed. Going further, he added that Congress leader Harak Singh Rawat had danced in this party. Struck by Champion’s bar-bomb, an image- conscious Godiyal, who is leading the charge of the Congress to dislodge BJP from power in 2027 and is one of the frontrunners for the post of the chief minister in the eventuality of Congress coming to power, retorted by stating that it was Champion who had insisted for having fun in the party thrown by him, causing the venue changed to a more spacious club. He then added a twist to the story by claiming that the incumbent Uttarakhand BJP chief Mahendra Bhatt was also present in the party. One could ask him what actually happened there, Godiyal quipped.
SOP shield
Following the unsavoury and highly condemnable incident in which a group of people led by BJP’s Raipur MLA Umesh Sharma Kau barged into the office of director Primary Education department, Ajay Kumar Naudiyal and assaulted him, leaving the director injured, the State administration, egged by the CM, has come out with a standard operating procedure ( SOP) for ensuring the safety of the government employees. Among other things, the SOP aims to restrict the entry of the general public, including those accompanying the public representatives in the government offices and ban vehicles of non-employees in the office premises. The CM’s intention to safeguard its employees from the rogues is laudable but the SOP should not become an excuse for keeping people away from the non- performing and corrupt Babus.
Vanbhoolpura verdict
The recent interim order of the Supreme Court in the sensitive Vanbhoolpura land encroachment case in which it stated that the land in Vanbhoolpura belongs to the State and that the people living there cannot dictate terms as far as the Railways’ expansion work is concerned clearly shows that about 4,500 families of encroachers will have to vacate the prime 29 acres of the land in Haldwani. The SC also directed the authorities to undertake a survey of the affected families after the end of the holy month of Ramzan to check their eligibility for benefiting from PM Awas Yojana. On the political front, the order has cheered the BJP camp. They may be thinking that relocation will come handy for them to polarize the electorate ahead of the crucial 2027 Vidhan Sabha polls.
