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Chandigarh, Congress Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha Capt Amarinder Singh today ridiculed the way the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has made a special demand to the centre to waive off state’s Rs 1.02 lakh crore debt. He said, it was outrageously ridiculous for the Punjab Chief Minister to beg of the Prime Minister for the special waiver instead of setting his own house in order.
In a statement issued here today, Capt Amarinder regretted that Mr Badal despite having served as the Chief Minister for such a long time does not know the methods and procedures to be adopted for settling and sorting out various financial matters between the state and the centre.
Besides, he added, it is wrong to exclusively blame the militancy for the current financial crisis in Punjab as it was actually Badal’s consistent failure, mismanagement and lack of a vision to handle the economy that has led to the present mess so much so that a Chief Minister alongwith his Deputy Chief Minister son has to virtually go begging for bailing the state out.
“Mr Badal apparently assumes that like he goes on distributing the financial grants in an archaic manner in his Sangat Darshan programmes, that has wreaked havoc on the state’s planning, he may also get the special grants and waivers from the centre in a similar manner”, he observed, while remarking, “either Mr Badal was trying to fool the people of Punjab or was trying to play a fool himself”.
He reminded Badals that he had always been telling them, whenever they gloated over Mr Modi and Mr Jaitely sending truckloads of money to Punjab, that nobody could do anything about it as long as the Badals did not put their own house in order.
The former Chief Minister pointed out, the matter Mr Badal is trying to raise now has already been dealt in detail by the Thirteenth Finance Commission that wanted Punjab and two other states, West Bengal and Kerala to fulfil certain conditions including reducing the revenue deficit, before their debt could be re-worked.
“Instead of trying to comply with the conditions put forth by the Thirteenth Finance Commission to set his own house in order, Mr Badal in his characteristic style was trying to divert the issue”, he observed, while telling Mr Badal, “presenting flower bouquets to the Prime Minister is not going to solve your financial mess, you need to sort it out yourself before Punjab goes bankrupt”.
Having a dig at Mr Badal who has always accused the Congress government at centre of discriminating against Punjab, Capt Amarinder remarked, Mr Badal must be realising in hindsight that Dr Manmohan Singh was always a better Prime Minister for Punjab than Mr Modi, who would never let Mr Badal return empty handed and would always put something into his begging bowl, while Mr Modi and his Finance are too blunt and cold to oblige him.
