Punjab Congress chief and the party's candidate in the Gurdaspur Lok Sabha bypoll, Sunil Jakhar today launched a scathing attack on the Badal family on the issue of farm loan waiver, charging former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal with "cheating" the people by "backtracking" on his promise.
Waving a November, 2006 newspaper clipping, which quoted Badal as saying that farm loans would be waived if his party came to power in Punjab, Jakhar told a gathering at Batala that despite being elected to the government twice, the Akalis did not give a single penny to the farmers of the state.
"The same people now have the audacity to criticise the Amarinder Singh government for allegedly not giving enough.
"If the Badals think that Rs 2 lakh is not sufficient, they should plead the case of the Punjab farmers with Prime Minister Narendra Modi," he said, pointing out that though the Akalis had left behind an "empty treasury", Singh had waived the loans of 10.25 lakh farmers, including 8.25 lakh whose entire debt had been written off.
The chief minister has announced a loan waiver of up to Rs 2 lakh each for farmers holding a maximum of five acres of land in the state.
Even as the leader of opposition in the state Assembly, he had accompanied Badal to meet then prime minister Manmohan Singh, Jakhar recalled and asserted that for him, Punjab's interests had always been supreme.
"But, the Badals were extremely biased when it came to spending money on the constituencies represented by Congress MLAs during the Akali regime," he alleged.
Jakhar assured the gathering that he would fight for central grants for Gurdaspur while the chief minister, who treated him as his "laadla" (very close to him), would sanction enough state funds for the region's development.
At Batala and at the party office in Gurdaspur earlier, the state Congress chief came down heavily on the BJP for its "anti-people" economic policies and "efforts to divide the country on communal lines".
He flayed the Centre for the current inflation, especially the "unreasonable" hike in fuel prices, and demonetisation.
Addressing a gathering in Gurdaspur, Jakhar exhorted the people to cast their votes keeping in mind the current situation, where the BJP rulers sitting in Delhi were "dictating" to the citizens as regards which religion to follow and what to eat or wear.
Besides MLAs Pargat Singh and Barindermeet Singh Pahra, Congress leader Fateh Jung Bajwa was also present at Jakhar's public meetings.
The Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat fell vacant following the death of the local BJP MP, actor-turned-politician Vinod Khanna, in April due to cancer. Khanna was a four-time MP from Gurdaspur.
The bypoll is scheduled to be held on October 11.
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