Samosa politics heats up in Himachal; BJP MLA orders 11 samosas online for CM Sukhu

Hamirpur/Shimla: With samosa politics heating up in Himachal Pradesh, a BJP MLA has ordered 11 samosas online for Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu.

Taking a dig at the state's Congress government over the CID conducting an enquiry into the sequence of events that led to samosas brought for the chief minister being served to his security staff, Ashish Sharma, the MLA from Hamirpur, shared this information on social media on Saturday.

However, the Congress maintained that the state government had not ordered any such inquiry and it could be an internal matter of the CID. A top CID official has also said that no formal inquiry was ordered into the incident.

"The state is already grappling with problems like unemployment, financial crisis, delay in employees' pension and arrears of DA allowance and at such a time, ordering a CID inquiry on samosas brought for Chief Minister Sukhu is very disappointing," Sharma said in a Facebook post in Hindi.

He said when the people of the hill state are fighting for their rights, the government should focus on real issues and not on such small matters.

"In protest against this, I have sent 11 samosas to the chief minister, so that I can remind him that it is more important to solve the real problems of the people," he added.

On October 21, Sukhu had gone to attend a programme at the CID headquarters in Shimla, where samosas and cakes brought for the chief minister were served to his staff instead.

Subsequently, CID officials ordered an inquiry into the episode. A noting by a senior official on the inquiry report said the act was anti-government and anti-CID.

Sudhir Sharma, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Dharamshala, in a statement, said the Congress government has made Himachal Pradesh a laughing stock in the country.

Both the MLAs are known critics of Sukhu. They were among the nine legislators, including Congress rebels and Independent MLAs, who had voted against the Congress in the Rajya Sabha polls earlier in the year. They later joined the BJP and won bypolls.

State BJP vice-president and Kangra MP Rajiv Bhardwaj asked what was inside the box, along with the samosas, that prompted the government to order an enquiry.

The state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the youth wing of the BJP, distributed samosas in Shimla on Saturday and raised slogans against the government for ignoring serious issues and probing petty matters.

State BJYM president Tilak Raj said people are unhappy with the government, educated and unemployed youngsters do not have jobs, but the CID is probing non-serving of samosas.

He claimed that the law-and-order situation has deteriorated in the state, drug abuse is on the rise among youngsters, including school-going children, of the 1,170 youngsters in the age group of 15-30 years admitted at rehabilitation centres, 35 per cent are "chitta" addicts, but the government is not bothered.

State BJP media in-charge Karan Nanda said the government has failed on all fronts. Himachal Pradesh, which was known as "dev bhoomi", is in news for all the wrong reasons, such as toilet tax, freight tax and and an inquiry into samosas, he said.

On the other hand, Congress leaders accused the BJP of raising the controversy only to harass the chief minister politically.

A Congress spokesperson said the BJP is bent upon harming the cause of the state government.

Naresh Chauhan, media advisor to the chief minister, said the state government did not order any such inquiry and it could be an internal matter of the CID, a stance maintained by the agency as well.

Sukhu had on Friday said the probe was into the "misbehaviour" of officials but the media presented it as an enquiry into missing samosas and claimed that the BJP has been running a smear campaign against the Congress government since his party secured a majority in the Assembly election.

Reiterating that it was an internal matter, CID Director General Ranjhan Ojha said in Shimla on Friday, "The chief minister was the chief guest at the launch of a data centre for the cyber-crime wing. After the event, the officials were having tea in the office when someone asked where were the eatables brought for the function and we said -- 'pata karo kya hua' (find out what happened)." "Neither have we issued any notice nor called for any explanation. The matter should not be politicised. We simply asked for a clarification as to what happened and a written report was submitted. We have no intention of taking action against anyone."