Punjab govt will lift every grain of paddy: Badal

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today said that state government had made elaborate arrangements to ensure that the harvest of farmers was lifted from the grain markets in a smooth and hassle free manner.
Badal said that farmers would not be allowed to face any sort of problem while selling their produce.
Addressing a gathering during a religious congregation to mark the Gurta Gaddi Diwas of Sri Guru Angad Dev here, the Chief Minister said that "only and only SAD was worried about the interests of the farmers and every effort had been made to safeguard them at any cost".

He said Shiromani Akali Dal "was, is and would ever remain committed for the cause of the farmers".
He said that any SAD worker could happily sacrifice every single drop of blood in him to protect even a single drop of farmer's sweat.
He said that it was on record that whenever the farmers of the state had faced any sort of problem the SAD-BJP alliance government has always came to their rescue.

Citing the examples, he said that during the last more than eight years the state government has provided "free power to farmers worth Rs 28000 crore otherwise their problems would have accentuated manifolds on account of tube well bills".

He said that the state government took every step to resolve the impending sugarcane crisis by ensuring the payment of arrears to the farmers from private and cooperative sugar mills.
Badal said that even now the state government has issued "funds to the tune of Rs 644 crore to compensate the farmers who have suffered huge loss due to pest attack on Cotton crop in Malwa region".
Lashing out at the Congress party for the plight of Farmer's across the country, the Chief Minister said that the successive Congress governments at the Centre had broken the backbone of the peasantry.

Badal said that due to the regressive policies of these governments the farmers were reeling under a whopping debt of Rs 32000 crore.
Taking the Congress party to cudgels, the Chief Minister said that the Punjabis in general and Sikh community in particular could never forgive the "Congress party for its sins against Punjab".
Badal said that how could the Sikh community forget "sins of Congress" like Operation Blue Star and 1984 anti-Sikh carnage, which have inflicted deep wounds on the Sikh psyche.
He alleged that the Congress governments at the Centre had "deliberately denied the state of Punjabi speaking areas, its capital Chandigarh and even its legitimate share in river waters".