On the second day of the winter session of Uttarakhand assembly the opposition Congress cornered the government on the issue of employment. The Congress members claimed that the state government has provided different figures of employment at different times in the house. Heated exchanges between the treasury and opposition benches also occurred on the unemployment in the state. In the question hour the Manglaur MLA Qazi Nizamuddin sought the government’s plan of action to reduce the rate of unemployment in the state. He said that an agency of the government of India has put Uttarakhand on the second position in the country after Jammu and Kashmir where unemployment is highest. In response to the question the Skill Development minister Harak Singh Rawat said that as per the CMIE agency the rate of unemployment in Uttarakhand is on decline. He also claimed that with an unemployment per cent of 3.1 the agency has put Uttarakhand among the six states where unemployment rate is less.
The minister stated that the government has provided more than 7 lakh employment in the last four and half years. Intervening in the discussion the leader of opposition Pritam Singh said that on December 22, 2020 the parliamentary affairs minister had informed the house that 10 lakh employment were provided by the state government while on March 4, 2021 the minister again informed the house that seven lakh employment were provided by it. Showing copies of the replies of the minister showing different data, the LoP demanded from the government as to which of these two contradictory figures are correct. Nizamuddin said that replies of the minister show that three lakh people lost their jobs during the pandemic period. The Parliamentary Affairs minister Banshidhar Bhagat defended the government by stating that both the data provided in the house are correct. Unsatisfied by the government’s reply the opposition members created uproar in the house. The LoP Pritam Singh said that the state government is misleading the house and the people of the state. He said that the government has failed miserably in providing employment to the youth. The Congress members then staged a walk out on the issue.
