The Congress had promised Rs 1,500 per month to every woman in Himachal Pradesh and the restoration of the Old Pension Scheme for government employees in the state. The party came to power last December by a narrow vote margin, but the BJP is now claiming that both these promises had remained unfulfilled so far. The Sukhvinder Sukhu-led government has completed four months in the state.
“Now, in Karnataka, the Congress is promising Rs 2,000 per month for every woman, Rs 3,000 for graduates and 200 units of free power. We will raise the credibility of such promises when the Congress has failed to fulfil similar promises in Himachal Pradesh, a state it won last year,” a top Karnataka BJP leader told News18. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his campaign, might warn voters not to fall for such “hollow” promises, the leader added.
The Congress has distributed lakhs of “guarantee cards” to people in Karnataka, which carry signatures of former chief minister Siddaramaiah and state unit president DK Shivakumar. The party has promised to fulfill four ‘guarantees’ in the first cabinet meeting if the Congress forms the government in the state.
Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, while campaigning in Kolar last week, had also asked the Congress to ensure that there was no delay in the rollout of these ‘guarantees’. But the BJP cited the party’s failure to provide the promised money to women in Himachal Pradesh so far, as well as no proper rollout of the Old Pension Scheme (OPS).
The BJP in Himachal Pradesh has, in fact, dared the Congress to produce even one woman who has received Rs 1,500 per month in her bank account. Government employees in Himachal Pradesh also continue to function under the New Pension Scheme (NPS).
Sukhu’s predecessor Jairam Thakur of the BJP has been targeting the new government saying while employees were still awaiting the rollout of the OPS, the Congress government was now speaking of a different model and a new standard operating procedure (SOP).
The state is also facing a severe resource crunch as the central government has refused to refund the NPS corpus of state employees saying there is no provision in the law for it. Rs 3,600 crore will also be needed to pay Rs 1,500 per month to over 21 lakh women in the state, the BJP pointed out.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman earlier said the Congress promises in Karnataka were impractical as they will come up to a cost of Rs 1 lakh crore while the state budget was Rs 3 lakh crore. She said the Congress had a poor track record and failed to fulfil similar promises in other states, where it had come to power since 2018.
Rahul Gandhi in his Kolar rally alleged that while the Centre was enriching industrialist Gautam Adani, the Congress government will work on enriching the people of Karnataka.
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