Fraud committed against farmers, says SAD on Punjab budget

The opposition Shiromani Akali Dal today termed the maiden budget of the Congress government as a "massive fraud against farmers", with the AAP accusing the ruling party of having backed out of its promise of total waiver of agricultural debts.
"A massive fraud has been committed by the government against innocent farmers and farm labourers. It must apologise for playing a cruel joke and rubbing salt on their wounds by backing out of its promise of waiving their loans," SAD president and former deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal told reporters.
The party called the budgetary proposals presented in the state Assembly here today by Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal as "a sad day for Punjab farmers".

"They have cheated the people of Punjab," Sukhbir alleged.
He said Manpreet had proposed an outlay of Rs 1,500 crore for waiving debts of distressed farmers in Punjab.
He said with this budgetary provision, loans only of Rs 14,705 per farmer could be waived and not up to Rs two lakh as promised by the chief minister on the floor of the House yesterday.

The SAD chief alleged that the state government was offering "inhuman and cruel" options to farmers for choosing between suicide to claim Rs 5 lakh or a loan waiver of Rs 14,705 per head loan if they wanted to live.

"This is an unprecedented heartless act of the government," he alleged.
Former finance minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa claimed there was a mismatch of over Rs 15,000 crore in borrowing and income and expenditure.
The SAD-BJP, Sukhbir said, will move a privilege motion against Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and the finance minister for allegedly making "contradictory statements on the floor of the House to mislead the Assembly and the people of Punjab".
The SAD also wanted to know how the government would waive total loans worth Rs 90,000 crore with a budgetary provision of just Rs 1,500 crore.
"The cat is out of the bag and the bluff played by the Congress on farmers on the eve of elections has been called in their very first budget. It is clear now why the Cabinet did not take a decision to waive loans in its first meeting," Sukhbir said.

He said it was a sad day for Punjab farmers who might have pinned their hopes on the Congress.
On the other poll promises of the party, Sukhbir claimed the finance minister had allocated Rs 10 crore for distributing mobiles to youth which came to one phone per village.
He claimed similarly the government had made a provision for providing 2,000 houses to the poor which worked out to one house for per seven villages.
Sukhbir said the SAD-BJP would force the government to give a complete loan waiver besides implementing all its promises, including giving unemployment allowance to youth, doubling social welfare benefits and increasing old age pension to Rs 2,500 per month.

The leader of opposition and AAP leader, H S Phoolka, claimed that the state government had played a cruel joke with farmers by announcing a meagre budgetary provision for loan waiver.
"The budget is on the overall, most disappointing. Moreover, a budgetary provision of just Rs 1,500 crore is cheating farmers. Making a wrong statement is contempt of the House.
"We will move a privilege motion against the chief minister because he had promised a complete debt waiver but a cruel joke has been played with a meagre budgetary provision. This is cheating and misleading innocent farmers," Phoolka claimed.
He also hit out at the Congress government, saying there was no clarity on how it intended to generate jobs.

"Rather than blaming everything on the previous government, the present Congress regime should tell people that they are sorry and unable to fulfill the promises made at the time of election," he said.
Union minister and state BJP chief Vijay Sampla said there was nothing new in the budget and the farmers had been betrayed after tall promises made to them.
BJP MLA Som Prakash alleged that the budget was "anti- farmer, anti-labourer and anti-Dalit".
Meanwhile, Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar lashed out at Sukhbir for allegedly playing petty politics over the budget through his false and misleading statements.
He said the former deputy chief minister was talking out of his hat without bothering to understand the budgetary provisions.

Trashing Sukhbir's criticism of the budget as a "desperate bid to cover up his own government's alleged failures and misdeeds in past 10 years", Jakhar said his statements on farm debt waiver and other announcements made in the budget were totally unsubstantiated.
"The Amarinder Singh government had categorically announced its decision to waive loans up to Rs 2 lakh of small and marginal farmers with up to 5 acres of land, and would be underwriting their loans.
"The Rs 1,500 crore allocation made for this purpose in the budget was merely the first instalment of the loans that the government would be paying off towards their bank settlement," Jakhar said.

He said it was surprising that Sukhbir could not work out this simple mathematics despite having led the government for 10 years.