Hamirpur BJP MP and Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA) president Anurag Thakur denied any wrongdoing Association and dared Virbhadra Singh to hold parallel inquiries into the sports body affairs as well as charges levelled against him in a time-bound manner.
While talking to the press at Shimla, Thakur said that the HPCA was open for any probe but asked whether the Chief Minister also volunteer to get all allegations against him probed. He asked for a fair probe into all allegations against the HPCA as well as the alleged controversies with regard to income tax returns, Ispat diary entries and excess land holding by the Chief Minister in time-bound manner by any agency.
BJYM national president also warned to fight back and expose several cases where norms have been flouted by the Congress led government. Thakur said that HPCA didn’t afraid from any inquiry and would go ahead and give its hotel to ITC as the job of the HPCA was to promote sports and not run the hotel.
He said the political witch-hunting was nothing new as even during its last tenure, the Congress regime had hounded the HPCA. He also justified the move to change the HPCA’s entity from a society to a non-profit company only to save itself from the control of the state government, like most other cricket associations had done all over the country.
Anurag Thakur claimed to build world-class cricket stadiums at Dharamsala, Nadaun and Bilaspur by the HPCA, without taking even a single penny from the government and viewed to promote cricket in Himachal Pradesh in the near future as well.
However Congress ministers have lambasted at the statement of Anurag Thakur. Industries Minister Mukesh Agnihotri and Urban Development Minister Sudhir Sharma, in their joint statement accused Thakur for levelling false and baseless allegations against Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh. They accused Thakur to do such tactics to divert attention of people from the misdeeds of the sports body would not help.
In a joint statement here today, they said an inquiry being conducted into the affairs of the HPCA was as per the chargesheet submitted by the Congress and it was committed to bring reality before the public.
They said that leaders of the BJP had been levelling frivolous charges against Virbhadra since the Assembly elections and all these had been proved to be false and political motivated. The court and people of the state during the Vidhan Sabha had totally rejected the allegations and Anurag was only trying to divert the attention of people from the murky affairs of the HPCA.
The ministers claimed that no illegal decision was taken during the tenure of Virbhadra as Union Steel Minister and no steel company was given any undue advantage. BJP leader Arun Jaitley had made these allegations just ahead of the Assembly polls.
The reference made by Anurag regarding the alleged diary seized by the Income Tax Department proved nothing. An inquiry was conducted by Income Tax Department and no irregularity was found.
Ministers claimed that irregularities had been found in the HPCA which clearly indicated that these had been committed in the names of Anurag and Prem Kumar Dhumal. Shamlat land of a village was gifted to Anurag by then Chief Minister and his father Prem Kumar Dhumal. They said an FIR had been lodged against the HPCA after proper investigation in Dharamsala.
