Leader of Opposition and former Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur has accused the Congress government of stopping Jan Manch program due to political malice.

In a statement issued here on Friday, Thakur said that Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu should have continued the program which was unique, keeping in view of the difficult geographical conditions of the state.

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Under the Jan Manch program the government used to reach the doorsteps of the people with the entire administrative staff to resolve the issues of the public.

“Now the state government is restarting the program, which is nothing short of Jan Manch, only the name is being changed,”claimed Thakur.

“If the program was to be restarted by changing the name, then it should have been done as soon as the Congress government came to power,” ĥe rued.

The Jan Manch program facilitated the public to get their issues resolved on the spot and saved them from travelling for several hours and hundreds of kilometers and saving travel expenses to get their work done, he said.

The job of the government is to keep in mind the interests of the common man and provide them and servìces easily, he stated, lamenting that there is no mechanism in the present government through which people can convey their point to the government in an effective manner.

Taking a dig at the Sukhu government, he said that from ministers to MLAs, the people of Himachal are in such a situation today where there is no one to listen to them.

The Chief Minister should apologize to the people of Himachal for closing the Jan Manch program due to political animosity, he added.

“Programmes like Jan Manch started by the previous BJP government made the government reach to the common people, he claimed, adding that thousands of people’s complaints were resolved in a day, however as soon as the Sukhu government came to power, it made Jan Manch a victim of its political ill-will.

Now after two years, it is doing what it should have done as soon as it came to power, said Thakur.

“Lakhs of people of the state did not get the opportunity to speak their mind. People did not get their complaints resolved. Due to the lack of facilities like Jan Manch, people could not air their grievances,” he said.

The previous BJP government had resolved 50,000 complaints on the spot through 256 programs of Jan Manch, he maintained, adding that this saved thousands of rupees of every complainant, which they would have spent on travel and paperwork.

“It is the job of any welfare state to take care of the interests of the people of the state and ensure that people do not face any kind of inconvenience in getting facilities and services. However, for the present government, political interest is paramount, not public interest,” he blamed.