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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Cooker or gas? Election goose cooking-JP Yadav

Cooker or gas? Election goose cooking-JP Yadav

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published Published on Nov 4, 2012   modified Modified on Nov 4, 2012
-The Telegraph

Shimla: The Himachal Pradesh elections appear to have turned a straight fight between the induction cooker and “pricey” LPG.

The Congress, led by five-time chief minister Virbhadra Singh, was looking the clear favourite till incumbent Prem Kumar Dhumal unveiled a new voter sop in the final rounds of campaigning.

The BJP chief minister offered free induction cookers to tide the people over the cooking gas price hike brought about by the Congress-led government at the Centre.

If the Congress loses Sunday’s elections, the biggest single factor could be the decisions to limit subsidised LPG cylinders to six a year per family and raise the market prices of unsubsidised cylinders.

These UPA II moves came as a boon for the unpopular Dhumal government, handing the BJP a new poll plank and allowing it to scale down its corruption campaign against Virbhadra, which was anyway becoming untenable because of the graft charges against party chief Nitin Gadkari.

In the last phase of campaigning, Dhumal waved the electric cooker at every public meeting with the promise that it would cost just Rs 150 a month in power tariff. BJP managers got excited after reports from the ground said the offer was catching the voters’ imagination.

That the Congress is rattled became evident when former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh attempted to counter the BJP campaign by suggesting that radiation from the cookers could cause miscarriages in women.

Today, a day before polling, the Congress put out advertisements in all local newspapers saying the “induction cooker is harmful to pregnant women and children”. It added that the cooker uses up as much electricity as a geyser and is not the cheap option the BJP is claiming it to be.

LPG cylinders have good penetration in Himachal because a felling ban has reduced the availability of firewood. So, the hike in cooking gas prices will hit a large number of families.

Dhumal’s promise of free induction cookers sounds convincing because Himachal is a power-surplus state and can ensure uninterrupted electricity supply.

Till the LPG-induction cooker battle took shape, the Congress had been expecting to sail through as the state has a history of voting out governments.

Congress managers acknowledged the latest setback but cited the example of Uttarakhand earlier this year to claim they would win.

“The fight has now become a close one but we will scrape through. In case of a split verdict, too, we have an advantage over the BJP — other parties will be ready to align with us,” a senior Congress leader said.

On the corruption scale, the state’s voters rate the BJP and the Congress on the same plane. “There is no difference — both are looters,” said Jagan Sharma, a trader in Theog, voicing a widely held opinion.

In the past five years, corruption allegations have been levelled against both Dhumal, 68, and his son and MP Anurag Thakur.

The complaints against the government range from the rutted roads of Upper Himachal to the closure of some 200 government schools and the favour shown to private educational institutions.

Politically, too, the BJP looks disorganised compared with the Congress.

Virbhadra, 78, had quit as steel minister, taken command of the state unit and got all his critics on board. For instance, he gave a poll ticket to Vijay Singh Mankotia, who had released a CD and filed a corruption case against Virbhadra. There are practically no rebels in the Congress.

In contrast, the BJP has many dissidents such as Maheshwar Singh, who quit to float his own Himachal Lokhit Party. Some 15 rebel BJP candidates are in the fray. Besides, the party has fielded most of its sitting MLAs, many of them battling anti-incumbency in their constituencies.

However, Virbhadra, whose personal popularity far exceeds that of two-time chief minister Dhumal, is up against anti-incumbency sentiments against the Centre.

“Virbhadra deserves to be chief minister but the central Congress leadership seems not to be keen. Else, why would they have raised LPG prices just before the polls?” asked Bijender Kumar, a teacher at a government college in Shimla.

The Telegraph, 4 November, 2012, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1121104/jsp/nation/story_16157680.jsp#.UJYSzGcm7KQ


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