BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s claim that roads in his state are better than those in the United States has landed him in the eye of a troll storm in social media platforms.
Chouhan who is presently on a trip to Washington to attend the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum meeting reportedly said on Tuesday, “When I got down at the Washington Airport and travelled on the road, I felt the roads in Madhya Pradesh are better than the United States.”
He said that his government had focussed on improving road connectivity, constructing approximately 1.75 lakh kilometres of roads in the state.
Social media users, particularly the twitter users poked fun at Chouhan’s claims by sharing pictures of MP’s potholed roads. Some users also shared pictures of Chouhan being carried in the lap of security personnel, during his visit to flood-hit areas of state’s Bundelkhand region in August 2016.
Chouhan’s statements have also given the Opposition Congress another opportunity to fire salvos on the CM.
MP Congress president Arun Yadav reacted sharply on twitter demanding that CM’s visa to the US be cancelled for violating diplomatic norms. Yadav further demanded that US President Donald Trump get a case registered against Chouhan under the relevant US law.
Former Union urban development minister and nine time Congress MP from Chhindwara seat, Kamal Nath took a jibe at the MP CM’s comments by posting news clips about a report tabled in the Rajya Sabha in 2015 in which MP stood on top in the country when it came to road accidents due to potholed roads.
He also shared news clips of this year, where cabinet minister in Shivraj Singh Chouhan government Kusum Mehdale had herself tweeted about the bad condition of roads in MP.
The ruling BJP tried hard to counter the hard criticism of the CM from various quarters on the social media by releasing a data of roads constructed in MP during the tenure of Congress government between 1993 and 2003 and during the tenure of present BJP CM in the state.
The data hurriedly readied by the state public works department (PWD) revealed that 11,460 km road was constructed in the state during the Congress government tenure between 1993 and 2003.
On the contrary during the 12 year tenure of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan from 2005 to 2017 35,923 km roads were constructed in the state.
The data also revealed the condition of the 224 roads constructed in the 12 divisions of the state as on August 24, 2017. As per the official figures, the 224 roads covered a total length of 12,582.356 km, out of which 6140.481 km (48.80%) were in excellent condition, 4921.985 km (39%) in very good state, 1228.99 km (9.76%) in average condition and just 290.9 km (2.3%) in bad condition.