With Himachal Pradesh headed for polls later this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday launched three mega central projects in the state, including laying the foundation stone for an AIIMS premier hospital in the Bilaspur district.
Officials said the 750-bed AIIMS would be set up with an outlay of Rs 1,350 crore with facility for a medical college with an intake capacity of 100 seats and a nursing college with 60 seats.
Other than laying the foundation stone for the institute, Modi took a swipe at Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh by asking the people of the state to throw out the Congress government which is "on bail".
He said the Congress leadership was wary of taking action against the Himachal chief minister as it was also sailing in the same boat.
The entire family of the chief minister is facing corruption charges and is on bail and when I asked some Congress leaders as to why the chief minister is not being replaced, they said that how can the party take action when the entire top leadership is itself on bail.
CM Virbhadra Singh is facing a money laundering and disproportionate assets case.
Asserting that no case of corruption has surfaced after the NDA government came to power, Modi said that till 2014, newspapers were full of reports on scams, be it Coalgate or 2G scam and asked the people of Himachal to “throw out the government on bail”.
Modi also laid the foundation stone of an Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) to be set up in Una town and inaugurated a steel processing plant of the Steel Authority of India set up with an outlay of Rs 70 crore in Kandrori town in Kangra district, via video conference from Bilaspur.
The 68-member Himachal Assembly is likely to go to polls in November.
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