Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
CHANDIGARH, April 15: Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president Capt Amarinder Singh today said that the revelations made by a leading financial daily about the massive food scandal in Punjab may just be the proverbial tip of an iceberg as the Akali-BJP government has survived only on deceit and fraud during the last nine year.
“It is a fit case for the dismissal as this government has blatantly cheated and defrauded not only the financial institutions but also the farmers for whom this money was actually meant”, the PCC president said in a statement here today.
Reacting to the revelations, the former Chief Minister said, he has always been maintaining that the government headed by the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has been playing fraud with everybody and now it has been revealed that they have even cheated the banks.
“Earlier we used to think that this money was being mainly squandered in Sangat Darshans, but now it seems to have been embezzled and misappropriated as well”, he remarked, while demanding a criminal investigation into the matter after the dismissal of the government.
“What is evident that they state government has raised the loans against non-existing stocks or it has not bought the stocks after raising the loans from the banks and diverted and embezzled all this money”, the PCC President observed, while adding, this is a fit case of cheating, fraud and embezzlement.
He pointed out, this was the reason that the farmers were not getting their due payment on time even after their produce was taken away by the state purchasing agencies. He said, the scandal will cast an ominous shadow on the purchase of the wheat which has already started arriving in the grain markets and the ultimate sufferers will be the farmers.
“This government was already suffering from the credibility crisis as nobody was prepared to lend any money to it”, he said, adding, now the situation will further deteriorate after the revelations about the scandal as it will be difficult for the state government to get the first instalment of Rs 20,000 crore credit limit for the wheat purchase.
