Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh, The Punjab Congress President Mr Partap Singh Bajwa today came down heavily on the Punjab Chief Minister, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, holding his government responsible for the mess into which the state had landed due to utter mismanagement on the food procurement front.
“It is your own government at the centre which has curtailed the flow of finances to Punjab holding your government accountable for the mismanagement on the food procurement as the state government is yet to settle the accounts. This is for the first time that Punjab is confronted with such a situation. The farmers are not being paid for days. The commission agents have gone on strike due to non-payment by the procurement agencies. It seems Mr Badal has become so nervous at the prospects of the BJP leaving the Akali Dal in the coming days that he has stopped taking even whatever little interest he earlier had in the matters of governance. After all, it is now his own government at the centre and he can’t blame anybody for this chaos”, he said.
He recalled that neither the farmers nor the commission agents faced any problem as the procurement used to be very smooth operation under the Congress governments. The situation Punjab was faced with was unprecedented and that too when it was the BJP government ruling at the centre in which the Akali Dal was a partner. He said the people had a right to know as to what was the role of the Akali Dal Minister in the Narendra Modi cabinet, Mrs Harsimrat Kaur Badal, if she was not even able to facilitate the resolving of such problems between the centre and Punjab. He asked Mr Badal whether the UPA government ever adopted such stubborn attitude towards Punjab despite the fact that all along, he had been alleging discrimination and step-motherly treatment.
He also strongly condemned the government for letting down the sugarcane growers saying the mills in the cooperative sector had failed to perform. Moreover, the procurement price of sugarcane left much to be desired. He said the Badal government had been talking of crop diversification from the wheat-paddy rotation. However, the farmers had no incentive even to grow sugarcane and the area under the crop was falling. He asked what plans Mr Badal had to get relief to the farmers from his own government at the centre. He said it appeared that there was the problem of trust deficit between the Modi government at the centre and the Badal government in Punjab. It could also be the result of BJP having already ditched its alliance partner, he added.
