The five Bills tabled in the House included a legislation dropping 12 committees, institutions and councils out of the ambit of offices of profit including State Infrastructure and Industrial Development Council. It also included Backward and Extremely Backward Class Welfare Council, Border Area Programme Monitoring Committee and Uttarakhand Social Welfare scheme monitoring committee.
At a time when the Uttarakhand government went full steam to Gairsain for the first Vidhan Sabha session on Monday, a relative calm prevailed in Dehradun, the interim capital of the hill state.
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The old Vidhan Sabha building here stood testimony to a session that did not begin inside the hallowed precincts of the House for the first time in its 14-year old brief history.
Barring some security personnel and the Vidhan Sabha officials, there was hardly any activity inside the building. Sitting idle, most of the officials were discussing Gairsain, an emotive issue for the statehood activists. "We are relaxed. Otherwise, there is a lot of tension during the Assembly session," said an official at the Vidhan Sabha here.
Outside the Vidhan Sabha, there was no barricading and no traffic snarls. "Thank god, we have been spared from traffic problems that occur during the Vidhan Sabha sessions," said Suman Semwal, a resident of Defence Colony, near the Assembly building.
But overall, a cross section of the people in Dehradun were of the view that this old building should be shifted to Raipur area where a proposal in this regard has already been approved by the previous Vijay Bahuguna government. "We have already identified land at Raipur for the new Vidhan Sabha building," said a top government official. But the new Harish Rawat government is yet to take a decision on the issue.
On the other hand, Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal indicated Gairsain should be made the new capital of the hill state. "Today's Assembly session at Gairsain is the first step for making it a capital of Uttarakhand," said Kunjwal, a strong proponent of Gairsain.
The successive governments have never showed seriousness in solving the issue of permanent capital and did not consider the report of the V N Dixit Commission in this regard. The commission had submitted its 250-page report in 2008 to the government. But since then, no action had been taken in the report which stated Dehradun should be made permanent capital but rejected Gairsain on geological grounds.