Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami wants Char Dham to reopen in small scale with Covid guidelines

Char Dham roads, works under Bharatmala project and railway projects up to Karnaprayag will be taken forward for further development, said the new Uttarakhand Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami to the Indian Express. A Special Leave Petition (SLP) has been moved in the Supreme Court on the Char Dham Yatra after the state High Court state the state cabinet’s decision to open the shrines for the locals to worship amid Covid-19 pandemic.

When asked if it is safe to allow Char Dham Yatra, Dhami explained that Kanwar and Char Dham Yatra are not alike as in the former more than three crore people gather in Haridwar, but for the latter, it is a journey and it is. Not the same. The government hence wanted to resume it on a small scale with RT-PCR reports of the devotees and on the basis of Covid-19 guidelines and capacity of hotels and tourist lodges.

Dhami refuted allegations by party workers that ex-CM Trivendra Rawat was removed for lack of communication with MLAs, centralisation of power, and dominance of bureaucracy. He instead said that ‘efficient and experienced’ officers like new Chief Secretary S S Sandhu have joined and the Bureaucracy and public representatives, all are working together to make Uttarakhand a better state.

When asked if Harish Rawat leading Congress in the polls will pose a challenge on him, he said that his party is working on a different agenda and the real challenge for him is the development of Uttarakhand.

On the politics of freebies that AAP and Harish Rawat is promoting, promising certain units of free power and electricity bill waiver, he said that the government at power in the state wants all-round development and not just an agenda for elections and hew will have the best options prepared by his party for the elections. Assuring that his party works in a democratic manner he re-iterated that at present he is doing the job the party assigned to him and he neither has regret about the past or worries about the future.