Purpose behind PM’s visit electoral: Rawat

Claiming the roads leading to Uttarakhand’s famous Himalayan shrines were already all-weather, CM Harish Rawat on Sunday termed PM’s proposed visit to Dehradun to lay the foundation stone of a network of all- weather roads to Chardham as an event with an eye on polls.

“Our roads are already all-weather, especially the ones going to chardham. Some people in their over-enthusiasm are advertising the PM’s proposed visit as an event where he is going to gift the state something entirely new which is not the case. “The purpose of his visit in the present circumstances looks electoral,” Rawat said here. 

He said the all weather roads going to chardham were the result of the state government’s consistent pursuit of the matter with the Union Ministry of Surface Transport in whose consultation an elaborate programme for their repair and reconstruction was worked out. Advertising the PM’s visit as an event where he would lay the foundation stone of a network of all weather roads in the state is to make short work of the state government’s efforts in that direction, he said. 

“When we were struggling for the repair and reconstruction of roads in the landslide prone districts, the Union ministers were not keen to visit Uttarakhand but now when elections are round the corner they have all begun to descend on the state,” he said.