Clash Over Jobs on Day Three of Monsoon Session; Opposition Stages Walkout

Shimla, August 20 — The third day of the Himachal Pradesh Assembly’s Monsoon Session on Wednesday witnessed heated exchanges during Question Hour over the issue of employment. The Opposition pressed the government to clarify how many jobs had been provided in the past two and a half years.

When Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu presented the figures in the House, the Opposition contested them, alleging that the government had failed to deliver on its promise of 2.5 lakh jobs in two and a half years. They demanded that the Chief Minister apologize to the unemployed youth. The argument soon escalated into sharp exchanges between the Treasury and Opposition benches, following which the Opposition staged a walkout.

Leader of Opposition Jai Ram Thakur pointed out that in July 2024, the Chief Minister had claimed in the Assembly that 34,980 jobs had been provided. Yet, in his Independence Day address, the number had fallen to 23,191. “How can the figures shrink instead of rising? This is a serious question,” he said. Thakur accused the Chief Minister of repeatedly misleading the House and undermining the dignity of both his office and the Assembly.

He further reminded that Congress had promised one lakh jobs every year and five lakh in five years. “The Congress government is about to complete three years, but the youth are still unemployed. Even results of recruitment processes initiated by the previous government were declared only after two and a half years, that too on court orders. Fresh recruitments have been stalled altogether, leaving the unemployed in distress,” Thakur charged.

The Opposition leader also alleged that the government was inflating its employment figures by including people working abroad. “Never before has such manipulation been done in the history of this state,” he added.