Dehra Dun: As Uttarakhand goes to poll on Monday, the election campaign in the hill state reached its crescendo today with Congress hitting back at BJP by raking up issues like the Godhara carnage and other scandals that had plagued the ruling party during the past one decade.

Sharpening its attacks, Congress in its blitzkrieg against the BJP brought back scandals like Kargil coffins, Dilip Judeo, Shaila Masood murder case, Bangaru Laxman bribery and other such scams through local media in the hill state.

"Will you hand over the power to these people," Congress said in the campaign.

"First BJP started attacks against us by raking up Bofors issue. Now it our turn to settle score," said a top Congress leader.

On the other hand, the ruling BJP continued its campaign "Khanduri hai Zaroori" asking the people to retain the ruling party.

Congress had been attacking BJP on changing chief ministers frequently to hide its alleged scams that had taken place during the tenure of former chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank. The party has also promised to give industry status to the tourism sector.

To counter the Congress campaign, BJP had recently highlighted the alleged Bofors scam where it said the Swedish government paid a kickback of Rs 64 crore to clinch the gun deal during the then Rajiv Gandhi government.

The party also highlighted other scandals like Rs 1.76 crore 2G spectrum and Rs 70,000 crore Commonwealth Games and Adarsha society scam.

Interestingly, the ruling BJP is not mentioning alleged 68 scandals that had surfaced during the previous Congress government in the hill state this time.

In November last year, the BJP government had directed the vigilance department to initiate action against all those people who have been indicted by an inquiry commission into 17 scams of the previous Congress government.

The move came after the completion of inquiry by the Justice (retd) BC Kandpal into the 68 scams of the previous government headed by then Chief Minister ND Tiwari.

"The inquiry commission has found irregularities in 17 cases either at the level of public servants or the department level during 2002 to 2007 (the tenure of previous Congress government). The state government has referred all theses 17 cases to the vigilance department with a directive to initiate legal action under the prevention of corruption act against all those public servants who have done irregularities," a BJP spokesman said.

Chief Minister BC Khanduri had set up the inquiry commission in September 2007 to prepare reports on the 68 alleged scams of the Congress government. Out of the 68 cases, the Kandpal inquiry commission has completed inquiry in 60 cases only.

PTI