Congress marching ahead strongly & will win also, said MP Pratibha Singh

|HT|

Maintaining that the victory in the by-elections boosted the morale of the party cadres, the newly-elected MP from Mandi, Pratibha Singh said the Congress was marching ahead strongly and will also win the assembly polls slated for the end of this year. She was addressing a press conference on the sidelines of a party event wherein the Himachal Congress launched the New Year Calendar commemorating the MP’s husband and former chief minister, Virbhadra Singh.

Replying to a question on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent rally held at Mandi, Pratibha said she expected that the PM would announce some relief package for the state, but nothing like that happened.

“The PM just tried to please the people by speaking in the local dialect,” she said.

Congress state president Kuldeep Singh Rathore said the demise of the former six-term chief minister has caused the Congress a great loss.

On the evacuation of people following the terror threat, Rathore said if the government and intelligence agencies had some inputs, they should have informed the people beforehand. “Why did they allow such a large number of people to gather in the first place?” he asked, adding that the entire episode damaged the reputation of Himachal and would hurt the tourism also.

Replying to another question, Rathore criticised the proposal of the central government to increase the rates of GST and said the government had no control over the rising inflation.

By increasing the rates of GST, he said, the government is hurting the people who are already reeling under inflation.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)