The chief ministers of two BJP-ruled hill states — Himachal Pradesh’s Prem Kumar Dhumal and Uttarakhand’s Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank — on Wednesday wrote a joint letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, seeking extension of central excise exemptions, granted up to 2013 under a special industrial package by the NDA government in 2003 but ended abruptly on March 31 this year.
Pokhriyal, who flew down Wednesday morning, held a meeting with Dhumal to draw a common strategy to get the central excise exemptions restored for the two special category states, the withdrawal of which has triggered widespread resentment in the two states. “We will wait for the Prime Minister’s response to the letter. This is first step we have taken togather. We really want to know the reasons why the Centre has chosen to withdraw the benefits, which were granted by the NDA government for 10 years. It is totally unwarranted and unprecedented action of the Centre, which the two states will resist together,” Pokhriyal told a joint press conference with Dhumal here.
Both Chief Ministers did not rule out the possibility of meeting the Prime Minister along with BJP’s national leadership including L K
Advani, Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley.
Pokhriyal contested Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma’s claim, made in Shimla last week, that the package has not been withdrawn. He said the Minister’s claim is not based on facts, and was misleading.
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