Hooda plays safe after garland episode,refuses gifts at rally

Hooda, who looked distinctly uncomfortable, refused to sit on a silver chair on the dais despite the repeated pleadings of his party men at Samalkha yesterday.

The Chief Minister who was presented a silver chair, mace, dozens of silver crowns and other ornaments has donated all these gifts to the local temple of Samalkha, Hooda's Political Advisor Virender announced at the public meeting.

Maaywati had drawn flak from Congress, BJP and other parties for accepting garlands of currency notes at a BSP rally in Lucknow and again at a party meeting.
Addressing the gathering, Hooda said a plethora of new schemes would also be launched to benefit the masses.

"The Congress party has always worked for the welfare of people belonging to all sections of society and large number of schemes and programmes were launched in the first term," said Hooda.

Hooda also took a dig at the INLD, saying the planned budget of the then INLD government was merely about Rs 2200 crore and "even the same was not spent for the development".
"The Congress government had allocated about Rs.11,000 crore for budget in the forthcoming financial year 2010-11," he said.  He assured the people that power shortage problem would also become a thing of the past once the new power plants start functioning.

HPCC President Phool Chand Mullana, local MP Arvind Sharma and other leaders also addressed the rally.