Budhlada/Chandigarh, April 7
Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal today said the SAD would chart out a programme to help distressed farmers whose standing wheat crop had been destroyed across 1.25 lakh acres of land as they had been completely abandoned by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. Addressing a massive rally here as part of the Punjab Bachao campaign along with halka incharge Dr Nishan Singh, the SAD president said, “We are making a programme to provide wheat as well as green and dry fodder to affected farmers”. He said the modalities of the entire exercise would be finalised at a meeting of the party’s district presidents and halka incharges’ at Chandigarh tomorrow.
Asserting that chief minister Bhagwant Mann had forsaken the farmers, Badal said they were yet to get compensation for destruction of their paddy crop in floods last year. “Now even after unseasonal rain and jail storms have flattened wheat crop across 1.25 lakh acres they have not been given any immediate compensation even though they were promised the same by the Aam Aadmi Party,” he added. He said despite this AAP Convenor Arvind Kejriwal was lying in Gujarat that the AAP government had given compensation at the rate of Rs 50,000 per acre to Punjab farmers within one month of the floods last year.
Badal said the lies of AAP and Bhagwant Mann knew no bounds. “Even though it is clear that incidents of sacrilege started in Punjab after AAP entered the State in 2014, the chief minister today claimed that I am responsible for committing sacrileges. If this is so then why does he not register a case against me,” he asked.
Badal also spoke on how AAP and the Congress had got together in a desperate bid to stop the SAD’s storm in the State. He said Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring was also speaking the chief minister’s language. The SAD president also announced that a hospital of the stature of AIIMS would be opened in Mansa beside a Veterinary College. He said all link roads would be relaid and that roads would be made to link all ‘dhanis’. He also announced that streets and drains in all 12,500 villages of the State would be laid with concrete and it would be ensured that every family had a ‘pucca’ home.
The SAD president also announced that an Rs 10 lakh interest free loan would be offered to youth besides restarting an expanded Aata Dal scheme and raising old age pension to Rs 3,100 per month and Shagun allowance to Rs 1 lakh. He announced that government jobs would be given to Punjabis and that 75 per cent subsidy would be given to establish livestock farms.
