Demography of Uttarakhand is being disturbed : Dr. Vinod Bahuguna, chief URM n formerly Principal Secy Govt of Tripura

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The people of Uttarakhand are very intelligent, hard working and nationalist to the core. They have contributed immensely in protecting the nation’s border as every 6th soldier of Indian army and Para-military forces is from Uttarakhand.

The leaders of Uttarakhand have in the past had significant presence in the national politics. The people who fought and died for this state’s creation must be turning in their grave with tears in their eyes as to what type of leaders Uttarakhand has been producing since 2001 November 2001 after creation of the separate State.

Uttarakhand has produced utterly selfish and totally corrupt politicians in thousands these days but rarely a leader who could provide honest leadership to the people to bring them development, happiness and a sense of belonging to a vibrant hill state where Gods live in the heart and mind of people.

During 21 years of creation of Uttarakhand intelligent and educated people are realising that the national leadership of two national parties who have ruled the state for 21 years treat this state as a tool to perpetuate incompetence compounded by corruption of highest order by its politicians and bureaucrats.

Bureaucrats are smart people who know it very well that they can befool the incompetent leaders and feed them well and then rule and exploit.

The national parties want to promote incompetent people be in charge for grinding their own axe.
This writer after having served for more than 37 years in senior positions in diverse situation as civil servant under the Central and State governments have out of love for his native state decided to accept the invitation to lead Uttarakhand Raksha Morcha a registered political outfit to try to bring to the fore the rising issues which not only threatening the integrity of the hill peoples culture and ethos as well as the geographic entity of Himalayan range.

The very existence of people here is seriously threatened if no action is taken by the society.

Let us discuss some of the issues in our 23 point charter adopted by us for establishing our party as a viable regional force.

Uttarakhand is a border state and very sensitive state from the security point of view. There has been going on a massive settlement of outsiders in a systematic manner to change the demographic pattern of the hills especially in border areas.

There are several complaints of religious structures allegedly coming up in the hills with people being lured and misled and gradually attempts also being made to create the communal tension. Several cases of love jihads have come to the notice of the law enforcement agencies n in media reports with a fear that it is being done deliberately by settling people in small market places.

A peaceful movement with the active participation of, youths mothers and sisters of Uttarakhand will be launched and all sections of people and organisations will be invited to be part of the movement to protect the identity of our state.

In this regard we would like to make it abundantly clear that “Uttarakhand Raksha Morcha”, :believes in constitutional values of secularism and complete harmony among all sections of people living in Uttarakhand.

Second most important issue is enactment of transfer of property and land transfer rights so that the cultural identity of the Uttarakhand is ensured by preventing indiscriminate buying of land and property by the outsiders. Only people having domicile of hills in 1950 should be allowed to buy land and personal property in hills. In other areas the cut off date should be the year 2001 when Uttarakhand was carved out from Uttar Pradesh.
As per constitution delimitation of Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies is to be carried out periodically based on the population.

The delimitation of Assembly seats is of fundamental importance to retaining the identity of hill people. Hence delimitation process should have the additional criteria of geography and terrain in hills apart from the population so that the numbers of seats in hill districts are not reduced in future. For this the Uttarakhand Raksha Morcha will root for amending the relevant Act. This should have been done at the time of reorganization of the UP state bill and creation of Uttarakhand. Till such time the Act is amended the delimitation process should be frozen indefinitely.

There is a tendency to deprive and make fool of the unemployed youths of the state by not making recruitments in various government departments and instead engaging contractors for providing the man power in different departments. Most of the contractors are from outside the state and consequentially large numbers of the people employed by them are outsiders.

Further, the whole system of man power engagement is not only bad as many of the people engaged are under qualified but the system is also promoting middlemen who take a big chunk of salary away from the employees. Because of this lopsided policy the youths are migrating to other states and it is building up resentment among the unemployed youths. It is also breeding corruption. Uttarakhand Raksha Morcha will end this highly unjust policy and would go for full recruitment of regular man power.
The industrial policy of the Uttarakhand state if flawed as it does not have any preference for employing the local youths. Uttarakhand Raksha Morcha would strive to reserve 70 percent of jobs in all industries for the locals. Special efforts should be made to develop and conserve local unique resources (for example medicinal plants, fruits, agricultural crops, eco-tourism and unique animal/ bio- resources etc for employment generation and preventing the migration of people.

Uttarakhand is under the grip of Drug mafia and the local administration is either incompetent or hand in glove with them. Recently we have seen people drinking and taking drugs openly in Mussoorie when the tourists came to see the snow fall in Mussoorie. Drugs are openly available all over Dehradun and the political leaders are busy in minting money for them and their cronies.

Yet another disturbing feature is allegedly the biased attitude of Election Commission as inspite of thrice submitting the requisite forms one junior Under Secretary of the Commission Mr Manish Kumar has been not cooperating with a regional party of the Himalayan state namely Uttarakhand Raksha Morcha and hinting to meet him. When he was spurned he had started saying speed post letters not received. When we write to Mr Suresh Chandra Chief Election Commissioner and his deputy Mr Rajiv Kumar Election Commission they do not bother to reply on any of our mail or communication nor do they give time to meet them. I have felt a complete change from the time Mr Zaidi was CEC. When I complained to him through mail in 2017 within two hours, our symbol came through email. This time I do not know what hidden hand is playing with people of Uttarakhand.

I have tweeted to President of India in this regard but haven’t acknowledged any response till date. Incidentally I was also informed by Mr Raturi the leader of retired employees who along with national Samanata Manch have floated the ‘Samanata Party’ whose registration the minions of Election Commission are sitting on one pretext or the other and denying them registration.

Uttarakhand Raksha Morcha and Samaanta Party therefore are seriously thinking to go to Supreme Court. The Country is missing a legendary former Election Commissioner TN Seshan who salvaged the sagging image of the Election Commission, by bringing absolute transparency during his term n introducing election identity cards at the pan India level, including discouraging politicians with criminal backgrounds and those with illegal wealth n assets etc making the declaration of wealth and filing of IT returns etc mandatory while filing the nominations to contest.

( To be continued)

(This article has been written by the President of a regional party of Uttarakhand, Uttarakhand Raksha Morcha, Dr. Vinod Kumar Bahuguna, a former chief secretary rank Principal Secretary and Agriculture Production Commissioner till April 2015 in Tripura. Before that he was the DG in ministry of environment and forests, equivalent to secretary rank in GOI. The views expressed here in are his personal )