JOIN USUttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna is facing rift within the Congress and also criticism from opposition parties for his alleged inefficient handling of the devastating calamity that ravaged the hill state.
The opposition parties have also called for the dismissal of his government. It is learnt that Union Minister for Water Resources Harish Rawat wrote to Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Saturday severely criticising the Uttarakhand chief minister’s attempts at mitigating the disaster.
Rawat nurtures strong ambitions to become the chief minister. He was also opposed to Bahuguna taking over as Uttarakhand chief minister. Rawat is joined by other state leaders in criticising Bahuguna. And the party's central leadership is now engaged in containing the internal dissent which is threatening to embarrass the state as well as Central governments.
At the peak of the relief and rescue operations by disaster management agencies in Uttarakhand, Assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal had claimed that the casualty toll might cross 10,000.
“Earlier, when I returned from a tour of the Garhwal region, I believed the casualty figure could be 4,000-5,000. But now, as per my information and bodies being seen by the people, I can say the figure can cross the 10,000 mark," he had remarked.
Bahuguna and Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde have so far said that the death figure might go up to 1,000.
Congress leaders in the national capital believe that Kunjwal’s public articulation of his views is essentially an attack against Bahuguna’s alleged shoddy handling of the disaster. The Congress leaders believe that Kunjwal should not talk as he ceases to be a politician as a Speaker, and especially at trying times when the state as well as Central governments are under attack from affected people and their families, apart from the opposition parties.
Kunjwal, state minister Harak Singh Rawat and Harish Rawat are believed to be fishing in troubled waters in their bid to oust Bahuguna for his alleged administrative failure to manage one of the worst-ever human crises in the state.
To contain the damage, Sonia Gandhi had dispatched emissary Ambika Soni on Sunday to Dehradun to privately counsel Kunjwal and Harak, as sabotage from within might end up maligning the top brass of the United Progressive Alliance government as well as the Congress, which they can ill afford.
A softening of stand of unhappy state leaders was visible on Monday, with Harak Singh Rawat criticising senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj for tweeting that the Uttarakhand government should be sacked for being “inept and incompetent” in managing the calamity.
The political war between the Congress and BJP began with Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari tweeting on Monday morning that neither leaders of the opposition in both Houses of Parliament—Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley—has visited the hilly state.
Swaraj did not take it lying down, and posted counter-Tweets: “The truth is that I woke you up about the scale of tragedy when I spoke to the home minister on June 18 and tweeted about this.” She also demanded that the Congress government ruling the state should be dismissed for being “inept and incompetent”.
This led to further slugfest, with Congress communication department’s newly appointed chief Ajay Maken logging on to a social networking site to make another jibe: “Pyres of many victims of this natural calamity are still warm. First the BJP tried to take credit of evacuating 15,000 in a day.”