Rakesh Pathania assumes office in Dharamsala Secretariat

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, August 4

Rakesh Pathania, BJP MLA from Nurpur, who was recently inducted into the Cabinet as a Minister for Forest and Youth Affairs, today assumed office in Dharamsala Secretariat.

Pathania said he would be sitting in Dharamsala Secretariat for at least two days in a week. “I will try to redress the problems of people of Kangra region through my office at Dharamsala,” he said.

The Secretariat that has the office of the Chief Minister and two ministers has symbolic identity. Dharamsala is referred to as the second capital of the state. The BJP, while in the opposition, had been blaming former Congress Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh of ignoring Kangra and other areas of former Punjab state that were merged with Himachal. After 1998, when former BJP CM PK Dhumal came to power, a practice was started to make at least one minister sit in Dharamsala Secretariat to redress the problems of people from Kangra on their doorsteps. Virbhadra Singh got the building complex of the state Assembly built at Dharamsala to give it a quasi second capital status. The winter session of the Assembly is held here since then. During the stint of the BJP government from 2007 to 2012, a new secretariat building was constructed at Dharamsala.

During the stint of the previous Congress government from 2012 to 2017 two Congress ministers GS Bali and Sudhir Sharma used to regularly sit at the Secretariat building. The previous Congress government at fag end of its stint took a Cabinet decision to officially make Dharamsala the second capital of state. However, during the stint of the present BJP government, none of the ministers sat in the Secretariat.