Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh – The Punjab Congress President, Mr Partap Singh Bajwa, today held the Chief Minister, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, for the havoc caused by heavy rains in the districts of Muktsar and Abohar while attributing to the situation to the criminal neglect of the recommendations submitted last year to solve the problem.
In a statement, Mr Bajwa pointed out that despite the fact that Lt General B S Dhaliwal (Retd), Technical Advisor to the Chief Minister, submitted his report to the state government after studying the problem last year following the damage due to heavy rains, no action was taken by the government.
“This amounts to criminal apathy of the Badal government towards the plight of the people. This is despite the fact that the UPA government had allocated Rs. 850 crore to the state government to solve the problem”, he added.
The PPCC chief pointed out that the recommendations submitted to the government were wide ranging which included re-alignment of the drains and change in cropping pattern. What to talk of re-alignment of drains, these were not even cleaned complicating the problem this year. This government had refused to learn any lesson.
He said the state administration was virtually paralysed and non-functional while the political leadership was just indifferent to the problems being faced by the people at large. The only aim of the rulers in the state was to fill their coffers.
He slammed the Chief Minister for being hypocrite by way of misleading the people by making false promises whenever they faced such critical situations and this had been going on almost year after year. He asserted that it was for this reason that he had dubbed it as criminal apathy.
Mr Bajwa the situation was all the more serious in the cotton belt. Last year, scores of houses were damaged. However, the government continued to betray its indifference despite the fact that a number of recommendations were made by the Technical Advisor handpicked by Mr Badal himself.
He demanded immediate steps to deal with the situation so that it was not repeated next year.
