The Punjab government today lashed out at the Akali leadership for their spiteful attacks against the Amarinder Singh government, saying it reeked of their outright panic at the fear of exposure of their alleged financial and other misdeeds of the last 10 years.
A government spokesperson debunked the latest statements of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leaders, led by former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, as a sign of their total frustration at their shocking defeat in the recent assembly polls and urged them to stop indulging in baseless allegations against the state leadership.
"The Amarinder government's move to probe the various misdemeanours of the erstwhile SAD-BJP regime and to bring out a white paper on the state's fiscal mess, which it has inherited from the Badals, has clearly unnerved the Akali leadership," he said.
This, said the spokesperson, was evident from the fact that the "Badals could not gather the courage to even enter the state assembly on the first day of its maiden session, which commenced on Friday".
Further, referring to SAD MLA and former state finance minister Parminder Dhindsa's comments on the fiscal situation in Punjab, the spokesperson said the white paper will nail the lies of the Akalis on the issue.
"The brazen loot of the coffers by the Badals and their cronies had brought the state to its knees, which the document will clearly prove," he added.
Notwithstanding the fiscal situation, the government was totally committed to fulfilling the Congress party's poll promises, more than 33 per cent of which had already been ratified by the cabinet, and officials of various departments had been directed to find ways and means of generating the necessary funds, said the spokesperson.
He pointed out "that the former chief minister Badal's retraction of his earlier remarks regarding Amarinder's recent meeting with the Prime Minister on the issue of farm debt waiver reflected his complete disconnect from reality".
"After initially opposing the chief minister's efforts to secure central government's financing on the issue, Badal is now supporting the same, which showed that the SAD leader was talking out of his hat without taking the facts into consideration," the spokesperson said.
He further pointed out that the Chief Minister had made it amply clear, more than once, that he was totally committed to waving off the loans of the state's farmers, with or without support from the Centre.
"However, the senior Akali leader (Badal) was conveniently refusing to acknowledge this fact and was resorting to mindless criticism of the state government's sincere efforts to bring the state's growth, which had been completely derailed by the Badal government, back on track," he said.
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