Tubewell connections on demand from September: Sukhbir Badal

Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today announced that tubewell connections would be provided to farmers immediately on demand from September onwards, as the state had become power surplus after commissioning of new power plants.
The state government had released more than one lakh tubewell connections this month, said Badal after laying the foundation stones of sewerage projects worth more than Rs 65 crore at Kot Ise Khan, Nihal Singh Wala and Badni Kalan in Moga district.
He said new agricultural power connections would be installed on demand on the pattern of the domestic supply connections with the commissioning of two new thermal plants in the state.

Badal claimed the state was incurring an additional burden Rs 6,000 crore per year for giving free power to the farmers and said it would continue to provide the facility as it gave relief to the farming community.
He also announced that the state government would provide development grant amounting to Rs 100 crore to each constituency in two years.
The Deputy Chief Minister said a concerted drive to ensure cent per cent clean water supply and proper sewerage system had already been initiated and within two years the Punjab villages would witness unprecedented development.

Holding the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre "guilty of ruining the farmers of the state", Badal said due to "exorbitant" hike in prices of diesel, fertilisers, pesticides and agriculture inputs coupled with the "non- remunerative" minimum support price, the peasantry of the state was on the verge of economic disaster.

He appealed the people to "show the door" to Congress in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections for its "anti-people" and "anti-poor" policies.
Later, addressing a gathering of SAD-BJP workers at Majitha in Amritsar district, Badal said the Congress party's "ship was sinking" in Punjab and claimed that a large number of Congress legislators and senior Opposition leaders were ready to join SAD.
"We are facing a problem of plenty," said Sukhbir, who is also the President of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), adding "the Congress rank and file has already thrown in the towel and its leaders are looking at the SAD as the only alternative".