Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
*Described the assurance for meeting of Mandi Gobindgarh traders
demands as victory of congress
Chandigarh, The Punjab Congress would continue to resolutely take up the issues concerning various sections of the society and take these struggles to the logical conclusion the way the party had achieved success by taking up the long pending demands of the industry in the steel town of Mandi Gobindgarh which have now been conceded by the state government.
The state party chief, Mr Partap Singh Bajwa, today said that the dharna announced earlier to be staged in front of the residence of the Chief Minister, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, on September 29 had now been postponed on the request of the associations of industry from Mandi Gobindgarh who had thanked the Congress for taking up their concerns strongly. He said the associations had conveyed that they had been given assurance by the state government who had been invited for talks after announcement by the Congress to lead their dharna in front of the CM’s residence.
“It is the solemn commitment of the Punjab Congress to the people in the state to continue to fight for the issues concerning them at every level. These struggles would be intensified in the coming days. This is now the single point agenda of our party as the people are reeling under the excesses and politics of vendetta unleashed against them. This is the government that has failed on every front and backtracked from the promises the Akali Dal made to the people. Even its alliance partner, the BJP, has expressed its resentment over several issues and the fissures are now only too open but also widening”, he said.
However, there was no change in the programme by the Kisan cell of the party to stage demonstrations at the district headquarters tomorrow.
He reminded Badal about another grave injustice done against Punjab by the earlier NDA government by announcing tax concessions for neighbouring hilly states. He asked Badal to get this undone by taking up the issue of industrial concessions to the neighbouring states with the Narendra Modi government. He asserted that Mr Badal had been misleading the people all these years by putting the blame for granting these concessions on the UPA government while this decision was taken by the Atal Behari Vajpayee government when which Mr Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, was a senior Minister and S. Sukhbir Singh Badal was member of Rajya Sabha during 2001 to 2004. He should have moral courage to admit it.
18700 industrial units have shut down in Punjab in the last 7 years which has rendered about 10 lakh people jobless.
He said the dream of bringing truckloads of money from the centre once the Modi government came into power that the father and son duo sold to the people in the run up to the Lok Sabha election had been shattered by none else than the Union Finance Minister Mr Arun Jaitley who had rejected the demand for a special package to bail out the state from the deepening crisis. He dubbed the mounting debt of the state as the cost of inefficiency and corruption in the government and profligacy.
He lambasted Mr Badal for continuing to mislead the people on the issue of mounting debt as it mainly comprised market borrowings and the loan component from the centre was very small and hence, the government at the centre could do little to extend any help to Punjab on this crucial issue. He alleged it was this money that had been splurged in the sangat darshan programmes which was a classic example of hundreds of crores having disbursed in the state without any accountability. He charged Mr Badal with using this money to consolidate his party’s vote bank as most of this direct assistance to the villages had been misappropriated and the condition of the villages was continuing to deteriorate. He demanded public audit of this money allocated to the panchayats during sangat darshan starting with at least one district.
Mr Bajwa also called upon the government to come out with a white paper on the state of finances beginning 1997 along with the details of the special term loan extended to the state by the centre during the fight against terrorism and the loan waiver announced by the centre from time to time. This should also include the money spent on the function organised the Badal government at Jalandhar during the 1997-2002 term to thank the centre for loan waiver.
