Speaker: The Chamba-Chowari tunnel would increase connectivity
Kuldeep Singh Pathania, the speaker of the Himachal Pradesh Vidhan Sabha, said on Saturday that the administration has suggested building a tunnel to link Chowari town and the district headquarters in Chamba.
The Speaker said at a meeting of Congress party members at the Ambedkar Bhavan in Chowari that a feasibility study for the project, which is estimated to cost Rs 1,500 crore, was being produced for the 7-km tunnel for which Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu has authorized a sum of Rs 4 crore.
Enhancing the Congress party’s standing at the booth level was the main goal of the gathering. In his speech, Pathania took aim at the central administration as well as the previous state administration run by the BJP, saying that although there had once been a “double-engine” government, progress on national development, including in Himachal Pradesh, had stopped.
Aimed at the opposition, Pathania said that while the state saw immense destruction during the previous year’s monsoon, BJP leaders and Kangra MP Kishan Kapoor were nowhere to be seen.
He also said that significant state projects had been put on hold by the erstwhile BJP administration. The Speaker used the example of the Finna Singh Irrigation Project, stating that while the canal was supposed to be constructed for Rs 240 crore, the cost has now increased to Rs 640 crore as a result of the then-BJP government’s incompetence.
He said, “The legislators were expelled within the confines of the law, an act that was upheld by the Supreme Court,” in reference to the six Congress MLAs who cast a ballot in the RS election but then joined the BJP.
He called on party members to band together in order to guarantee the Congress party’s triumph in the Lok Sabha elections. On the occasion were District Congress President Sandeep Jasrotia, Treasurer Mayank Mahajan, President of Sevadal Vinod Kumar, President of the Cooperative Society Rajkumar Chambial, District Secretary Rajiv Kaushal, Senior Vice President of the District Congress Committee, Krishna Chand Chela, and Deputy Chairman of the Municipal Council, Surender Singh Chadak.
