CONGRESS MP ‘INAUGURATES’ COLLEGE BEFORE CM, GETS BOOKED

RATLAM : Congress parliamentarian Kantilal Bhuria has been booked by the police for ‘inaugurating’ a government medical college here a day before Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was scheduled to launch it, an official said on Thursday.

Bhuria, a former Union minister, represents the Ratlam-jhabua Lok Sabha seat.

In a game of one-upmanship ahead of the upcoming assembly elections in the state, Bhuria reached the Government Medical College at Banjli in Ratlam along with his supporters and a priest and held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Tuesday.

“Since Tuesday is an auspicious day, I inaugurated the college as the project had been approved during the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government,” he told reporters after the event.

After the district administration was alerted about it, officials rushed to the spot and police personnel were deployed there.

“A case under section 144 of CRPC (prohibiting assembly of more than four people in an area) and IPC sections 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) 448 (punishment for house-trespass) was registered against Bhuria and 15 others based on a complaint given by the college administration in this regard,” Ratlam superintendent of police (SP) Gaurav Tiwari said.

On Wednesday, Chouhan formally inaugurated the medical college building that has been constructed at a cost of ₹350 crore. “It is a big gift to the Ujjain division and will set an example in the area of medical education. After 1964, no new medical college was established in the state. But after I became the chief minister, we decided to set up a medical college in Sagar and five years back in Ratlam...,” he said at a the inauguration ceremony.

Assembly elections in the state are due to be held by the end of this year.