BJP charge sheet baseless: Minister

Shimla, Mar 9: Refuting allegations of corruption levelled against him by the Himachal Pradesh unit of the BJP, Industries Minister Kuldeep Kumar today said it was a ''poor attempt to malign him.'' Talking to reporters here, he said the BJP's charge sheet filed against him was ''baseless, unsubstantiated and malicious.'' Mr Kumar was reacting to the BJP's charge sheet submitted to the Governor on Sunday that accused him of getting a petrol pump and a SCVT College allotted to both his sons besides other corruption charges.

Mr Kumar said he had not misused his position for getting petrol pump allotment in the name of his son.

''If getting a petrol pump is any measure of corruption, then the BJP people who have two or three pumps allotted to themselves are two to three times more corrupt than me,'' he said.

Mr Kumar said no one from his family owned any State Council for Vocational Training (SCVT) College anywhere in the state and the opposition's charges were baseless.

As far as providing employment to 12 people in the HIMCON was concerned, he said only eight people were employed there and out of them only four were from Gagret constituency.

The appointments were purely on merit basis and after fulfilling all formalities unlike during the BJP tenure when it appointed 239 people in the Kangra Co-operative Bank after advertising 180 posts only, he added.

Mr Kumar said 49 candidates were appointed without ''transparency'' and purely on political basis, while 51 of these were from Hamirpur district alone, which was 23 per cent of the total vacancies, he said. He accused the former PWD minister Mahinder Singh (BJP) of employing 4,000 people from his constituency during the previous government's tenure.

''The previous Dhumal Government was known for selling jobs to people from outside the state.'' Rubbishing the BJP'c claim that his brother-in-law had encroached upon government land in Gagret area of Una district, he read out the Gagret Tehslidar's letter that said no such encroachment had been made in the said piece of land.

Mr Kumar claimed that no candidate has been returned twice by the people of the district and that he was the only one to win from Gagret thrice since 1993.

Replying to another question whether any inquiry had been launched against people appointed illegally in the Kangra Co-operative Bank, he said a vigilance inquiry was on.

UNI