NEW DELHI, MAY 4: Intense struggle by people of the hill region of Uttar Pradesh for creation of a separate Uttarakhand may not bear fruit during the Budget session of Parliament ending on May 17.Though the Bill has been returned by UP Assembly with 29 objections, it is unlikely to be passed during the ongoing session. "There is insufficient time for the Bill to be passed by both Houses of the Parliament. At best, we can introduce it during this session and get it passed in next session," claims senior BJP leader from the hill region, Maj Gen (Retd) Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri.Khanduri led a delegation of three other MPs from the Uttarakhand region, Manvendra Shah, Bachi Singh Rawat and Manohar Kant Dhyani to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on Thursday, to get the Bill passed at the earliest.However, Uttarakhand Samytukta Sangharsh Samiti (USSS) leaders accuse the Vajpayee Government of deliberately delaying creation of the new State since it would inevitably mean that the Ram Prakash Gupta government in UP will be left with a slender majority. "With Kalyan Singh supported by over a dozen BJP rebel MLAs, breathing down Gupta's neck, he can hardly afford to carve out Uttarakhand," says Samiti convenor Harish Rawat, a veteran Congressman.The BJP and allies have a strength of 223 in a House of 425 in UP. Of the BJP's 176 MLAs, 17 come from Uttarakhand. Thus once President gives his assent to the Bill after being passed by the Parliament, the BJP's strength would go down to 161 and considering the threat from Kalyan Singh, party can't take a risk.Sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs claim that the Bill had been sent to various ministries to get their comment on the objections raised by UP Assembly. After getting their opinion, the MHA would finalise the Bill to be introduced in Parliament. The entire exercise was taking a long time, sources claimed explaining the reason for the delay in finalisation of the Bll.USSS leaders rubbish the MHA claims by saying how can bureaucrats decide whether Haridwar would be part of the new State (as demanded by USSS) or will remain in Uttar Pradesh (as demanded by the UP Assembly) or else only Kumbh Mela Area would be included in the Uttarakhand (as envisaged in the Bill). "It has to be a political decision. Babus can't decide the fate of an entire district," Rawat claims.Most of the objections made by the UP Assembly to the draft the Bill are political in nature. Thus blaming bureaucracy for the delay is but fooling the innocent people of Uttarakhand or rather Uttaranchal (as BJP refers to the region), Rawat asserts.The USSS has, however, already stepped up pressure on the Government and MPs hailing from Uttarakhand. On Wednesday, they staged a dharna at residences of MPs from the region. "If the Bill is not passed during the current session, we will burn effigy of the Prime Minister at all panchayat headquarters in Uttarakhand besides at 101 places in Delhi before launching a tiraskar pakhawada (humiliation fortnight) during which all UP ministers and MPs from the region would be humiliated. This may be followed by Uttarakhand bandh, Rawat claims.
