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Is Khanduri losing his way on roads?
By IE
Saturday October 27, 02:28 AM
When Maj Gen B.C. Khanduri (retd) took over the reins of the Uttarakhand government as chief minister this March, he jokingly said that he would be a 'miser' and aim to bring fiscal discipline into the state administration. It was hoped that Khanduri, with his image of being a tough administrator with a disciplined army background, would be able to accelerate the pace of development in this backward hill state. Many here, particularly from Garhwal, still nurse high hopes about him as the first Garhwali leader after his uncle, Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna.
But after more than six months in the saddle, Khanduri has proved that he is indeed a 'miser' as far as state spending is concerned. The state government, in the six months that he has been in power, could spend only 17 per cent of the budget - indicating that spending on various developmental projects in the state has been sluggish at best. Out of a total annual budget of Rs 4788 crore for the year '07-'08, the government has been able to spend only Rs 795 crore, as of September 30.
Khanduri's decision to probe more than 50 alleged scandals committed by the previous state government, with the aim of punishing the politicians as well as the bureaucrats responsible, has had a significant impact on the ongoing developmental work. One of the problems for Uttarakhand was that when it was a part of Uttar Pradesh the region had been gravely neglected. Not more than 4,000 villages were connected with roads until 2000. The previous N.D. Tiwari regime had gone ahead with several works, some without budgetary sanction. Roads, the lifeline of people in the hill state, had figured high on the priorities of the earlier regime, which had claimed to have built and repaired 9,800 kilometres of roads, including 404 bridges linking more than 9,527 villages with roads. It had also proposed to link all the 16,829 villages of the state by road by the year 2010.
With the change of regime from the Congress to the BJP in the state and the CM's efforts to probe scandals and ensure a tight financial control, most developmental works have come to a standstill. With two commissions, headed by former high court judges, already constituted to probe alleged scandals, officials are afraid and unwilling to stick their necks out in taking any development initiative. The contractors, the main link between the government and the execution of developmental works in the hill state, are today in dire financial straits. Now, starved of the funds, they have begun to stop working on many projects. Others have ground to a halt because of ongoing inquiries. For instance, after ordering a probe into the working of the State Industrial Development Corporation, the government has also discontinued with the four-laning work in Rudrapur town.
Interestingly, all this has been happening under Khanduri, who as Union minister of surface transport in the NDA government was responsible for the successful initiation of the 'Golden Quadrilateral' project linking the four metros, as well as the North-South and East-West corridors connecting the four extreme points of the country.
It appears then that Khanduri the administrator, seems to have been co-opted by Khanduri the politician. Coming as he did from national politics to state politics, amidst significant opposition from within the party in the state, he has had from the beginning to struggle to consolidate his position politically. Besides facing dissidence from former chief minister Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, who is also the BJP party chief in the state, Khanduri has had to win the support of Uttarakhand Kranti Dal to gain a majority in the assembly.
There has also been a string of elections to face. First, he had to campaign and win the deferred Bazpur assembly segment poll. His next test was to enter the state assembly. This entailed winning over Lt Gen T.P.S. Rawat (retd), a former Congress minister, who had resigned from his Dhumakot assembly seat for him. After winning the Dhumakot assembly seat comfortably, Khanduri is now busy preparing for the Pauri Garhwal Lok Sabha seat by-election. To keep his promise to help Rawat enter the Lok Sabha from his earlier Pauri Garhwal seat, Khanduri has been electioneering hard, even though the Election Commission is yet to announce the date of polling.
BJP insiders argue that Khanduri is treading very cautiously, but his detractors claim that he has lost his way in his home state. The future will reveal which assessment proves to be the right one.
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