Bishan Singh Chufal annoyed with state bureaucracy, threaten to summon officers before privilege panel of assembly

Bishan Singh Chufal annoyed with state bureaucracy, threaten to summon officers before privilege panel of assembly

B.D.Kasniyal

Pithoragarh, Dec 25

Bishan Singh Chufal, one of the senior most ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator who is a BJP MLA  from Didihat and a former state unit president has criticised the working of the state bureaucracy and threatened to summon the officers before privileged committee of the state assembly, who allegedly do not pick up telephones of elected public representatives.

Talking to media persons at his residence today, the Didihat MLA said that under Chief Minister’s scheme to grant completion of 10 works in each assembly constituency of state, he had submitted proposal of widening of roads in his assembly constituency in order to make these accident free, but when he tried to contact the concerned engineers to help in furnishing detailed information for the proposals, the engineers denied to do so.”Some of them are even not picking up my phones now,” charged Bishan Singh Chufal.

“My proposal was to widen the roads up to 6 meters and 7 meters at the bends, as due to narrow roads and less space at bends the roads become accident prone,” said Chufal.

The BJP leader said that before 1980, when there was no heavy machines to cut roads and only labourers used to cut the roads, road construction agencies like PWD had acquired more than 10 meters of land at both sides of roads but constructed the roads only of 4 meters width and less at the bends on the hill roads due to hard rocks on some roads. “These less widened roads and bends have now become accident prone in the hill region of state as the traffic on these roads have increased manifold since the construction of roads half a century ago,” said the BJP leader.

The MLA cited roads from Pithoragarh to Muwani, Pithoragarh to Jhoolaghat and roads constructed along river Kali from Jauljibi to Jhoolaghat in his constituency.He further said that when asked to send proposals of widening these roads up to the standards of PWD roads, the officers are refusing these on the pretext of seeking permission from forest department before any such widening.”I ask them when they are giving notices to residents by these roads in local roadside markets for road widening up to 10 meters distance, why they are doing so roads for widening from 4 to 6 meters and at bends. It would minimise accidents on these village or state roads  by  giving more space for increased vehicles presently on the roads,” said the Didihat MLA.

Bishan Singh Chufal had been at loggerheads with former Uttarakhand Chief Minister and former Maharshtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshiyari in the state BJP politics. Present Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami is a protégé of Bhagat Singh Koshiyari.