Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Wednesday launched the ‘Sarkar Gaon Ke Dwaar’ programme at Galore under the Nadaun Assembly constituency in Hamirpur district. The project is aimed at solving the problems of the people at their doorstep.

He instructed officials to upload all the 87 complaints received during the programme on the Chief Minister Helpline.

The government kick-started this programme across the state to make people aware of the state’s policies, programmes and achievements in the last year.

As a part of the initiative, ministers and MLAs would also visit villages to inform people about the public welfare schemes initiated by the state government to enable people to derive maximum benefit.

Considering that about 90 per cent of the population of the state resides in villages, efforts will be made to strengthen the village economy in the coming budget, the Chief Minister said.

The realisation of a prosperous Himachal hinges on the self-reliance of our villages, he said, adding that a target has been set to make Himachal the most prosperous state in the country in the next 10 years.

“We inherited a huge debt due to excessive borrowings and fiscal mismanagement by the previous BJP government. The Congress cannot be held responsible for this,” he said, adding that the state was taking loans primarily to repay the interest accrued due to excessive borrowing during the tenure of the previous BJP government.

“Despite being aware of this enormous debt, we remain committed to fulfilling our promises made to the employees. We restored the OPS in the very first cabinet meeting in line with our election manifesto”, he asserted.

A request was made to the central government to release Rs 9,000 crore for the NPS but the Union Government did not accede to our request, he said.

Perhaps the central government was not in favour of restoring the OPS to the state employees, he added.

Himachal faced its biggest natural calamity last year which resulted in the destruction of 3,000 houses and partial damage to 13,000 houses in the state, he said, adding that despite limited resources, the state government has taken up the task of rehabilitating those affected by the disaster. The state government came up with a special relief package of Rs 4,500 crore despite the financial crunch.

Amidst the disaster, BJP leaders kept demanding to call the Assembly session but they did not support the resolution to provide a special relief package to Himachal on the lines of Bhuj and Kedarnath.

When a resolution was brought in the Assembly to declare the natural calamity in the state a ‘national disaster’, the BJP MLAs opposed it, which proves that the BJP is anti-Himachal as it did not stand with the disaster-affected people, Sukhu said.

“Revenue Lok Adalats are being conducted on the last two days of every month to settle the pending revenue cases. More than 65,000 pending cases of mutation and more than three-and-a-half thousand partition cases have been settled so far. The concerted efforts of the state government in the revenue department mark the first instance of serious attention being given to resolve such cases,” Sukhu said.

The Chief Minister said that out of the 273 mutation cases, 266 have been resolved. Besides, out of the 115 partition cases pending in the revenue courts under the Galore tehsil, 60 cases have been disposed of, he added.