Sunday, 25 September 2022 | PNS | DEHRADUN
By taking a series of swift actions in less than 24 hours in the backdoor appointments in Uttarakhand Vidhan Sabha and Ankita Bhandari murder case the Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has tried to give a clear message on governance to the people of the State.
On Friday the Assembly speaker Ritu Khanduri sent a proposal to the State government that 228 backdoor appointments in the Vidhan Sabha secretariat should be cancelled. Acting promptly on the proposal the CM immediately accepted the proposal. He congratulated the speaker for the prompt inquiry in the case. Within hours of taking this decision, Dhami on late Friday night ordered demolition of the resort owned by Pulkit Arya, the son of the BJP leader Vinod Arya. Pulkit is the prime accused in the murder of Ankita Bhandari. On Saturday Dhami ordered the removal of Ankit Arya from the post of deputy chairman of the Uttarakhand Other Backward Caste Commission. Ankit is the brother of Pulkit Arya. Acting on the suggestion of CM the president of the Uttarakhand BJP, Mahendra Bhatt removed Vinod Arya and his son Ankit Arya from the BJP.
It is pertinent to mention here that on the backdoor appointments in the Uttarakhand Vidhan Sabha, Dhami had requested the speaker to get the case investigated and cancel the appointments if found illegal. This stand of CM assumed significance in the wake of the allegations that relatives and acquaintances of the senior BJP leader and RSS functionaries figure in the list of 72 appointments done during the tenure of the Speaker Prem Chand Agarwal. Incidentally Agarwal who holds the Finance, parliamentary affairs and urban development portfolios has been consistently claiming that all the appointments done by him were legal.
In the Ankita Bhandari case, CM acted as per the public aspirations and ordered the demolition of Vananatra, the illegal resort of Pulkit Arya. On the orders of the CM, the bulldozer of the Pauri administration demolished the resort of the accused in murder of Ankita Bhandari.
The prompt decisions taken by CM taken one after another show that Dhami wants to give a clear message that the policy of Zero tolerance on corruption adopted by him would continue and he would compromise on governance. These steps are also being viewed as an attempt to salvage the image of his government which has taken a beating in recent times due recruitment scams and the charges of improper handling of law and order situation.
