Uttarakhand’s tourism minister Satpal Maharaj urges CM TS Rawat to allocate contracts of Rs 20 lakhs to small local contractors

The Tourism, Irrigation, Religion and Cultural affairs minister of Uttarakhand Satpal Maharaj on Wednesday met and presented a letter to the chief minister of Uttarakhand Tirath Singh Rawat demanding that the local labourers ( working class/ ploretariats ) and those living in distant villages including the migrated ones be alloted small contracts by the engineering departments of Uttarakhand in order to grant them employment on large scale.

The popular religious leader of Sarv Dharm Manav Dharm Sammelan turned politician who joined BJP from Congress and had been the state minister of Finance n Railways twice at the centre and now Uttarakhand’s cabinet minister after deliberating with the chief minister and submitting a detailed letter, catagorically demanded that the various engineering departments of the hilly state should divide the contracts of large sum into the contracts of twenty lakh each and allot them to the local small contractors in order to give employment to the local labourers as well as those living in distant villages.

Though this seems to be good idea but sounds an indifferent suggestion as even if the contract of Rs. Twenty lakhs is allocated to the local contractors at the decentralised level do you think that the local labourers or working class or those who’ve migrated during the pandemic times would be able to get these contracts ? This seems to be quite a travail suggestion. The reason being that the bureaucrats, engineers and contractors network is so closely connected with each other for vested gains that even smaller contracts are manipulated by them and favours earned thus getting every benefit even out of the smaller contracts.

In his letter submitted to the chief minister Tirath Singh Rawat, Satpal Maharaj said that the construction contracts in various engineering departments are allocated to contractors through tendering. Therefore in view of the challenging pandemic times these contracts should be divided into twenty lakh each contracts and allocated to local contractors to accommodate more number of people than obliging a single contractor.

He added that in this regard the necessary legal amendment needs to be done at the earliest so that the local small contractors could be helped during the challenging Covid 19 times.