Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
* Demands white paper on state finances
Chandigarh, The Punjab Congress President, Mr Partap Singh Bajwa, today slammed the Chief Minister, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, for misleading the people on the special term loan, which, he claimed, had been waved way back in 2007-8.
In a statement, he quoted from the information provided by the Union Ministry of Finance to the state Congress’s RTI Cell chairman Dr. Jasdeepak Singh whose para 5 states, “Apart from the above information, the State Government of Punjab was also given special term loan of Rs. 5799.92 crore for combating terrorism relevant to the period 1984-85 to 1993-94. The Government of India has written off Rs. 9913.59 crore towards the repayment of these loans and accrued interest thereon. The last of these loans was written off in 2007-8. No conditions were imposed while waiving these loans”.
“It has become a habit with you to mislead people by resorting to blatant untruths. Here is the letter from the Union Ministry of Finance nailing your white lies. The issue is very serious. You must apologise to the people of Punjab for misleading them all along. You should also explain to the people your stand on terrorism as during that period, you had been describing it as militancy and you had gone to the extent of signing a memorandum addressed to the United Nations demanding Khalistan. The people of Punjab are fed up with your politics based upon rank opportunism and utter lies”, he said.
Mr. Bajwa questioned the logic repeatedly being extended by the Badal government that it was this special term loan which was at the root of all ills afflicting Punjab while the fact of the matter was that it stood waived long time ago. Moreover, Mr Badal should also explain to the people as how come that his government had organised a function at Jalandhar after his party came into power in 1997 to thank the centre for waiving this loan. He said the memory of the people was not that short-lived.
He reiterated that the state government must come out with a white paper on the state of finances since 2007 and release the first letter received by the state government waiving some installments of the special term loan. He asserted this was followed by yet another letter waiving more installments. The second letter was received by the Punjab government in 2006.
He said in the context of the information provided by the Union Finance Ministry, it was imperative that the state government must come out with the facts.
