Kiran Choudhry, Leader of the Congress Legislature Party in Haryana, has said that the Manohar Lal Khattar Government seems to revel in contradicting itself and taking sharp U-turns, the latest being on the issue of discretionary grants.In a statement issued here today, the former minister said that the Cabinet decision to enhance limits of the discretionary grants of the Chief Minister, Speaker of the Haryana Vidhan Sabha, Cabinet Ministers and Ministers of State contradicts the publicly stated and oft-repeated stand of the Chief Minister on the issue of discretion.On holding interviews for making selections, Mr Khattar is on record saying that since the element of discretion, involved in any interview, opened the gates to graft, it should be dispensed with and selections should be made only on the basis of the written test. “That the Chief Minister and his team want to enjoy discretion in distributing largesse, but do not want to allow it to anybody else, even while conducting an interview, speaks volumes about the contradiction in the approach of the Khattar Government and the double standards it follows.
While on one hand, the BJP says the state is funds-starved, on the other hand, the discretionary grants of ministers are being doubled. Also, the employees are being denied their due but the ministers are being given funds for distribution”, Ms Choudhry said. Even the decision to set up a committee to go into the issue of giving state government employees salaries on par with their Punjab counterparts, though welcome, runs counter to what Mr Khattar had said earlier, she pointed out.Announced by the Finance Minister, Capt Abhimanyu, after meeting leaders of employees unions in Chandigarh yesterday, the decision represents a U-turn on Mr Khattar asking the employees not to ask for more. Earlier, the BJP Government had taken a U-turn on the issue of implementation of the Swaminathan Commission report on agriculture.