DEBATE ON TV 100 HIMALAYA on the issue of UK Capital

Sunil Negi ,Journalist

I was invited by the TV hundred Himalaya, the prominent news channel of UK on Sunday, the 6th of January' for participating in a debate on the issue of Gairsain,the would be Summer capital of Uttarakhand as recently announced by the Chief Minister of UK Vijay Bahuguna, seven months after assuming the charge at the helm of the Congress government. Participating with me in the debate were two other colleagues namely Harish Joshi and Gopal Upreti, active in the Uttrakahnd movement . The agenda of the discussion was whether Gairsain should be the full fleged or a part time capital of UK as announced by the CM, Vijay Bahuguna or his simultaneous decision to construct a full time capital in Dehradun at the cost of Rs. 87 crores is the correct decision and in conformity to the wishes of the people of Uttarakhand. The anchor of the debate which lasted for an hour and was live telecast in whole of Uttarakhand Jagdish Jarait also asked whether the opposition of BJP, the main opposition of UK is right in outrightly condemning this move of the incumbant CM for partially announcing the decision of making Gairsain as only the grishmakaalin Rajdhani of UK than to declare it a full time capital as per the wishes and aspirations of majority of the people of UK. The debate was quite acrimonious and hectic as all the participants were for the full time declaration of the capital of UK as Gairsain then to name it merely the summer capital by way of starting the construction of the Vidhan Sabha Building there from 14 of January 2013 on the pious occassion of Makar Sankranti to be inaugurated by the Chief Minister as the formal programme of UPA, chairperson visiting Gairsain earlier had been cancelled in view of the inclement and bad weather. Being the key participant as journalist and the Chairman of the Uttarakhand Journalists Forum, I strongly castigated and condemned the BJP and the UKD for being so cool, ignorant and complacent towards declaring Garsain as the capital of UK when they were collectively ruling Uttarakhand since 2000 till 2012, including the ruling Congress. I questioned the BJP leadership of the state, outrightly to answer my question as to where were they during all these years when they had Khanduriji, Pokhriyalji, Nityanand Swamyji and Koshiyariji as their chief ministers and where was the UKD all these years, particularly when their MLA Diwakar Bhatt was the Minister of Cabinet rank in the BJP government from 2007 till 2012. Now when the present CM of Congress Vijay Bahuguna has soon, after coming into power merely after seven months declared Gairsain as the summer capital of the 12 year old state, then instead of appreciating him and patting him on his back they are as usual just condemning him as the former's historical decision has put the BJP literally on the back foot on this historic and long pending issue which has resulted in straightaway honoring the sentiments and emotions of the movement workers of the separate state who have sacrificed their precious lives for this most noble cause. My point was, why should we not give Mr.Bahuguna an opportunity to at least let the work of the summer capital or Vidhan Bhawan start formally in Gairsain at the cost of Rs. 25 crores at least for the time being and can later on pressurise the government on the issue of making Garsain the fulltime capital. If this vexed issue was not thought about during the last 12 years by the BJP, UKD and other participants in the previous governments, how can it be possible to arrive at a one time solution of fullcapital,in Gairsain which practically involves tremendous amount of various formalities and official notifications and involvement of hundreds of crores of Rupees. The fact of the matter is that after the announcement of Mr. Bahuguna to name Gairsain as the summer capital of UK, the UKD and the BJP has been compelled to goon the back foot and now the issue of political credit has been hijacked by Bahuguna and Congress from these politically greedy and overambitious parties. The debate was in totality very interesting and acrimonious and reached the conclusion that if a positive start has been made by the incumbant chief minister everybody should welcome it subject to exercising more pressure on the government to gradually declare Gairsain as the full time capital than to just unhealthily criticize for the sake of criticizm.