Cong: People living in woeful condition under BJP regime

Raipur, April 13, 2011 

The DCC has alleged that the people of Chhattisgarh were compelled to live in woeful condition owing to apathetic attitude of the BHJP government. “With increasing pries of essential commodities at regular intervals and hike in different types of taxes and power tariff, the common man is struggling to survive,” said the DCC president Inderchand Dhariwal, general secretary Dr Niranjan Haritwal, vice president Madan Taleda and other Congress leaders on Wednesday.

“The BJP first deceived farmers of the state. It had promised to give Rs 270 per quintal bonus and five horsepower electricity free-of-cost to the farmers in its election manifesto. However, after coming into power, it refused to give bonus and free power to the farmers. This has affected the poor farmers as many of them have migrated to the other states for employment while the others are seriously brooding to shun agriculture sector considering it a burden instead of means of livelihood,” they said.

“The government also hiked water tax from Rs 60 to Rs 200 per month which is again a decision intended to dent people’s pocket deeply. It is unfortunate that the BJP government is adopting double standard in water distribution issue. While it is rapidly selling water of state’s rivers to the industrialists, it never takes interest in solving water crisis in various places and simply believes in imposing tax,” they added.

The Congress leaders also raised the issue of power tariff hike and said, “The government is hitting hard to the common man and now it has increased power tariff rates from 22 percent to 40 percent for domestic, agricultural and industrial consumers.”

They said the recent LPG card verification process too was the government’s ploy to harass people. They slammed the government for depending too much on the officials who recommend for implementation of impractical decisions.

The Congress warned the government of launching massive protest against it and call state bandh if it would not rollback water tax and power tariff rates and delay fulfilling its promises made to the farmers.