Deepavali with quake victims

By Manas Dasgupta

GANDHINAGAR, NOV. 13. It will be a different Deepavali for the Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, and his Cabinet members tomorrow.

For the first time, instead of celebrating the festival with their family, they would spend the day with the quake-hit people of Kutch and three other affected districts to share their grief.

Most of the political appointees in the posts of chairpersons of State-owned boards and corporations as well as some senior leaders of the ruling BJP have been asked to spend the day in a similar fashion. The Ministers, chairpersons and party leaders have been allocated two villages each to make door-to-door calls to exchange greetings.

For the people of Chaubari village in Bhachau taluka and Trombo in Rapar taluka, both in the worst-hit Kutch district, it would be a big day because the Chief Minister would be among them.

The Cabinet, which met only a couple of times during the last five weeks since the new Chief Minister took over on October 7, was specifically convened today. And immediately after the meeting, the Ministers left for their allocated villages, though some grumbling could be heard.

The decision could prove to be a major political gain for the BJP in soothing the hurt feelings of the affected people. The people of Kutch, in particular, were unhappy because they felt that the previous Keshubhai Patel Government had done precious little for them in the eight months it was in power since the killer earthquake devastated the district on January 26. The Opposition leaders admitted that the decision was Mr. Modi's master-stroke in trying to regain some of the ground lost.

At its meeting today, the Cabinet decided to set up a committee under the Cooperation Minister to redraft the cooperative policy to make the cooperative structure more broad-based and to restore the people's confidence in the sector, shattered after the debacle of the Madhavpura Mercantile Co-operative Bank and several other institutions.

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Section  : Other States
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