SHIMLA: The entire opposition in the Himachal Pradesh Assembly led by its leader, Prem Kumar Dhumal, staged a noisy walkout on Tuesday when the debate on the budget estimates for the year 2006-07 was coming to an end.

Mr. Dhumal called the reply of Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh as most unsatisfactory as the later failed to include any of the suggestions made by the opposition. A visibly upset Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh called the BJP members as `morally coward' who could not face the situation.

Earlier replying to the debate, the Chief Minister said that unemployment figures given by various leaders were highly exaggerated. He said the strength of registered unemployed youth in the live registers of the Employment Exchange had come down to 8.60 lakhs this year from nearly 9 lakhs on March 31, 2003. Pointing out anomalies in the registered unemployment figure, the Chief Minister said that at least 36 per cent were those who were already employed or having multiple registrations. He claimed that the Government was planning revalidation for the whole State and the confirmation exercise was already over for the Shimla district. Out of 53,821 registrations, only 32,149 were actually unemployed in the district, bringing down the number by 40 per cent. If the same criterion was taken for the State, the total number would come down to 5.16 lakhs from 9 lakhs.

Giving comparative figures of his Government's three-year rule with that of five years of the BJP, Mr. Singh said that the debt-GSDP ratio was just 61 per cent during his last tenure in 1998-99. But during the Dhumal- led BJP Government it went up to 80 per cent in 2003-04. But now it has again come down to 76 per cent in 2006-07.

He said the State Government taking steps to reduce fresh borrowings and the interest-GSDP ratio had come down to 7.25 per cent in 2006-07 from 8.15 per cent in 2002-03.

The Chief Minister said the canard spread by the BJP on his Government for not bringing Central assistance to the State was also baseless. Giving year- wise data, he said the average assistance brought by the BJP during its tenure was just Rs 223 crores but during the Congress rule the average was Rs 498 crores. Mr Singh claimed the State Government had created 2.34 lakh jobs in the industry and had started 6,669 new projects.

The daily wagers have been regularised. The per capita income had been increased and a growth rate of more than 8 per cent had been achieved, he said. He further said that the Consumer Price Index had come down to 13 per cent in 2003-05 from 20.7 per cent in 1998-03.

Mr. Singh termed the alleged regional disparities against Kangra, Una and Hamirpur districts as pointed out by the BJP and some Congressmen as highly unfortunate and groundless. He said the three districts had just 36.19 per cent of population but the IRDF sanctions were 43.14 per cent.

Later talking to the media persons, Mr. Dhumal said that the CM's reply was a mere formality. He said that Mr. Singh had not touched the issues of inflation, decrease in VAT proposals on food grains, corruption, enhancement in salaries and wages of workers and the deteriorating law and order situation in the hill state. He expressed deep concern over the rising forest mafia in the State.

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