Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh, August 1: People’s Party of Punjab chief Manpreet Singh Badal today strongly opposed the move to levy 5 per cent cess on power bills to mop up Rs 1400 crore annually as not only outrageous but also manifestation of bankruptcy of ideas.
“It is unheard of in fiscal management that such a cess is levied to facilitate the collection of bills of other departments. In this case, the proposal is to levy cess on electricity bill to enable the state government to recover the water, sewerage and sanitation charges. I fail to understand the logic behind the move”, the former finance minister added.
He pointed out that he was opposed to it not only on the grounds of its being against all canons of fiscal management, but this would also put additional burden even ion those power consumers were not availing the services like sewerage, especially in the rural areas.
He said as per the reports appearing in a section of the press, this “bright idea” had emanated with Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal who had been making loud claims of the state being financially stable and all talk about financial crisis being mere propaganda to malign the state despite the state being under staggering debt that had already crossed Rs 1 lakh crore. The fact of the matter was that the state government was in no position to recover the bills from the consumers.
He demanded that the state government must come out with a white paper on finances as the state was going to be burdened with another tranche of big loan to finance the so called development plans which had so far failed to take off.
He made it clear that the PPP would oppose every move of the Akali Dal-BJP government in the state to put such extra burden on the people as the state government was supposed to meet such obligations from its own sources.
