State Congress chief Virbhadra Singh seems in a mood to target BJP lead Govt on every front and today again he raised question over its spending on advertisement. He claimed that spending on advertisement by the Prem Kumar Dhumal regime to highlight its achievements as gross misuse of government funds and machinery to mislead the electorate.
He alleged that public money worth crores had been spent on advertisements which did not reveal the truth. For instance, it was claimed in the ‘Rozgaar ke avsar apaar’ advertisement that 40,000 jobs in the government sector and 70,000 in the private sector were provided in the last four years.
The fact was that the BJP government had officially abolished 1,500 class III and IV posts and 44,000 posts were lying vacant in the education, revenue, PWD, irrigation, public health and police departments, he claimed. No new jobs had been created, he added.
Virbhadra Singh said the BJP was promising in its government-paid election advertisements to create 2 lakh jobs in the future, not specifying any time limit. With its poor track record in creating jobs, this announcement was nothing more than an empty election slogan, he claimed.
The ‘Zindagi roshan hui’ advertisement of the BJP pertained to the Centre’s ‘Bharat Lamp Yojna’ which was renamed as ‘Atal Bijli Bachat Yojna’ to derive political mileage for the party, he said.
It tried to project that it was providing Rs 80 crore worth of CFL bulbs free of cost to consumers, but it did not spend a single penny on it, he pointed out.
In the ‘1,86,275 new electricity connections’ advertisement, the BJP government had claimed that 1,86,275 new connections were given and 2,656-km high-tension lines, 3,677-km low-tension lines and 3,644 transformers were installed, he said.
As a result, the load increased from 3,668 MW to 4,403 MW, for which 5,709 substations were required, but only 4,217 substations were built, he said. The power board was in a debt trap with a burden of more than Rs 4,500 crore, he added.
In the ‘Himachal First Aaya’ advertisement, it was claimed that the social welfare budget had been increase to Rs 6,579 crore, he said. The fact was that capital expenditure on social sectors as a percentage of total expenditure had gone down from 25 per cent in 2006-07 to 11 per cent in 2010-11, he said.
In education, capital expenditure had gone down from 20 per cent to 5 per cent, he pointed out. In health, capital expenditure had gone down from 10 per cent to 8 per cent, he said. The ranking of the state in the national education development index had come down from fourth in 2006-07 to 17th in 2009-10.
