Cabinet Ministers Thakur Singh Bharmouri, Forest Minister and Prakash Chaudhary, Excise and Taxation Minister have strongly denounced the allegations leveled by Arun Dhumal against Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and his family members and termed them as cheap and baseless.
In their joint statement, Cabinet Ministers said that Dhumal family was indulging in malicious propaganda and mudslinging to divert and distract public attention from their own wrong doings which were under probe. They had made HPCA a captive organisation by inducting voting members from neighbouring States. Congress leaders stated that the Dhumal led Government had leased out prime land to the HPCA.
They claimed that Dhumal family has been marginalised in the BJP after their misdeeds were coming to the fore. The popularity of Virbhadra Singh and stream of developmental works launched by the Congress Government in the State under his stewardship have completely baffled them. They claimed that after loss of power they were seeing imminent defeat in the forthcoming parliamentary election which has made them nervous. Desperate Dhumals were making baseless personal attacks on Virbhadra Singh and his family members out of frustration, congress leader added.
In their statement Congress leaders claimed that Prem Kumar Dhumal had unleashed a personal vendetta against Virbhadra Singh and false cases were registered against him during the two BJP led Govt. A 32 point chargesheet was also submitted by the then BJP Government to the CBI for investigation and Virbhadra Singh came out clean on all counts.
Bharmouri and Chaudhary said that BJP leaders had leveled various unfounded allegations against Virbhadra Singh during the assembly elections, but they all fell flat and people of the State gave a good drubbing to the BJP. They said that Dhumal family has not learnt any lesson from it and was once again making unfounded accusations against the Chief Minister and his family to malign their image, but the people of the state were well aware of their cheap gimmicks and were not to be misguided by them.
Congress leaders have asked Arun Dhumal to explain what was wrong in taking a loan by one individual from another, and when the transactions were transparent, fair and through bank account and properly reflected in the returns. All such matters are dealt at appropriate levels by appropriate authorities and Arun Dhumal had no authority in the matter. They said that
Vikramaditya Singh is an upcoming youth leader and he was being deliberately targeted with an ulterior motive of causing harm to his campaign in the ongoing youth elections. Vikramaditya Singh is a PAN card holder and has been filing his income tax returns regularly and if the income tax authorities find no fault in them, what authority does young Dhumal has to question them.
Cabinet ministers termed it strange that Dhumals were having access to the income tax returns of Virbhadra Singh and bank details of Vikramaditya Singh which were purely personal documents. This affirms that the Dhumal Government had been illegally intruding into the privacy of people by indulging in phone tapping and bugging, they added. Congress leaders accused Dhumal family for spying into the personal lives of their political opponents and peeping into their personal accounts, which was illegal and a crime.
