Ahmedabad, 10 October 2012

Leader of opposition in the State Assembly Shaktisinh Gohil has said that the Gujarat Chief Minister has anti poor, tribal and dalit mindset. He is concerned about few billionaires only and has done nothing for poor and dalits. Gohil said that congress at the centre gave rights to tribal and others on forest land, but BJP ruled state government has not given these rights of land to these people. He was addressing a meeting of workers, booth incharges and local leaders of Bhiloda and Himmatnagar Assembly segments of Sabarkantha district.

He said that the government was not concerned about quality education to people of Gujarat. This is also clear from the fact that Gujarat has the lowest budgetary allocation in the country in terms of share of the total budget. In the past anyone could pursue medical or engineering education. However, now professional education has become a dream for poor.

He cited example of a poor student who was studying medicine in Ahmedabad. Fees was increased overnight. This led to a severe depression for the student who belonged to a poor family and his parents had already toiled to get him admitted in medical college. He committed suicide. This is a blot on Gujarat, he said. The family of the student has not got any relief. Parents are running from pillar to post to lodge a complaint, but in vain.

Referring to the allegation of the CM that the central govt was not giving it permission to lay gas pipeline, he said that he was misleading and challenged the Chief Minister to disclose details of Gujarat proposal of pipeline sent to Delhi. He said that as per the rule such proposals were cleared by regulatory body and any proposal must satisfy the criteria set up by the regulatory body. He said that there was no question of Cong’s refusal as no proposal was sent. Gohil said that CM, in fact, wanted his favorite businessman to make money out of the pipeline project.

Challenging Modi over his remarks that injustice is meted out to the state by the Centre Gohil said that as per the social-economic review 2011 placed in the State Assembly by the state government the length of national highways reduced. Instead of increase during the five years of NDA rule the length of national highways in Gujarat reduced from 2382 kms to 2354 kms in 2003-04 when NDA went out of power. This injustice of reduction in length of highways was done when BJP was at centre. On the other hand it is clearly mentioned in the same report that during the UPA rule the length of national highways increased at a great speed from 2354 kms to 3245 kms in 2008-09.

The Congress government gave maximum benefits to Gujarat, Gohil said. While maximum injustice was done during NDA rule when political Guru of Modi, senior BJP leader L K Advani who was elected from Gujarat was deputy Prime Minister. During his tenure the length of highways in the state reduced. Gohil said that if proven wrong he was ready to face any action by Modi or even a worker. Congress is not a party which plays politics on false propaganda but always presents facts necessary for facilities of people.

Addressing the gathering at Sabarkantha AICC Secretary and MP Ashok Tanwar said that Gujarat is a prosperous state and the credit for it goes to people of the state who are hard working and have business acumen. But today instead of overall and balanced development, there is development of few favourites of Modi. Common people in the state are not getting fruits of their hard labour as the government is not supporting them.

AICC general secretary Madhusudan Mistry gave details of the state government’s policies for tribal which have done injustice and harm to them. He said that the state government does not even bother to see that tribal, villagers, farmers, dalits and others are benefited by various programmes of Central government. Lakhs of rupees for child and women development given by centre have been wasted by CM for his own publicity. MLAs and large number of workers attended the workers convention at Bhiloda and Himmatnagar.