Congress senior leader and state Planning Development and 20-Point Implementation Committee Chairman Ram Lal Thakur said that Congress led government is keen to solve the problems of Bhakra Dam oustees’. Thakur said that Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh has always been sympathetic towards them.

Ram Lal Thakur said it while talking to mediapersons at Bilaspur. Thakur accused opposition to twist the Chief Minister’s recent statement out of context and misrepresenting it to prove that he had become hostile towards their interests.

He counted some of the concessions given by the Chief Minister to the oustees like waiving off their rehabilitation loans with interest and penal interest, holding special “mini settlement” for their areas to save them from litigations, allotting 187 plots to them at the Cinema Colony in 1985 and now earmarking two sectors for allotting plots to the remaining oustees in the transport workshop area, constructing the Ali Khud bridge and laying foundation stones of the Baghchhal and Berry Dadollan bridges over the Gobind Sagar etc.

Ram Lal challenged BJP leaders to come out with a single concession which they had given to the oustees during their rule in the state. He said that the BJP could not even finalise the Rehabilitation Policy regarding the regularisation of encroachments of oustees in Bilaspur town even after its commitment in the HP High Court.