The Uttarakhand government ordered a judicial investigation into the alleged misappropriation of disaster relief funds in the state after the 2013 floods, PTI reported. This comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took on the Harish Rawat government for alleged corruption.
Addressing a rally at Dehradun on Tuesday, Modi had said he will bring Uttarakhand out of the “bottomless pit of corruption in which it was languishing under the present regime”, PTI reported. The chief minister reportedly took strong exception to Modi’s remarks. He ordered a judicial probe despite a panel constituted by the state government that has looked into the alleged irregularities. Rawat added that as he had more faith in the judiciary than the Central Bureau of Investigation, he had not recommended a CBI probe.
“Now that the PM has reiterated the charge we have asked retired justice MS Chauhan of Chandigarh High Court to conduct a probe into the alleged irregularities,” Rawat said according to PTI. Rawat also said that former Congress leader Vijay Bahuguna, who joined Bharatiya Janata Party in May 2016, was handling the disaster relief operations in the state in 2013 as he was the chief minister then.
Modi had unveiled the Rs 12,000-crore Chardham Highway development project in Dehradun. He urged the people to bring BJP into power in the upcoming Assembly elections so that the party can “build an Uttarakhand as envisioned by Atal Bihari Vajpayee who created it”. Five states will have their elections in 2017, including Uttar Pradesh, which has 404 seats.
The state was hit by floods following incessant rains and a cloudburst between June 15 and 17 in 2013. The floods killed thousands of people and caused economic damage worth thousands of crores.
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