Cong betrayed people in three years of its rule: Sukhbir Badal

A day after the Congress government in the state highlighted its achievements on the completion of three years in office, the SAD in a scathing attack on Tuesday dubbed the party rule as the period of betrayal marked by the neglect of people.

The opposition party on Tuesday also dared Chief Minister Amarinder Singh to name "a single development project or welfare scheme" started by his government while accusing him of "cheating" farmers on debt waiver.

The SAD chief also accused the CM of betraying the youth in the name of jobs, cellphones and Rs 2,500 unemployment allowance every month.

The Congress government on Monday had held a press conference to highlight its achievements to mark the completion of three years of its rule in the state.

 

"This is a period when the people of Punjab got nothing except betrayal, indifference and neglect at the hands of a power-drunk and arrogant ruler who humiliated Punjabis, treating even meeting people below his royal dignity," Badal alleged.

Attacking the chief minister for being "inaccessible", SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal asked how many times Amarinder Singh toured the state and enquired about people's problems.

He said in the past three years of the Congress rule, the state remained "headless" with "no government visible" either in the civil secretariat or in villages, towns and cities.

"How many times in these three years have you been to your office or to your state or how many times have you been even to the sacred Harmandar Sahib and Durgiana Temple to seek blessings of the almighty," Badal asked the chief minister.

He said Chief Minister Amarnder Singh "lied shamelessly" in the name of the great 'Guru Sahiban', taking a "false oath" in the name of Guru Gobind Singh, "only to cheat farmers" on debt waiver and jobs to suicide-hit families.

Stating that the Congress government has "not fulfilled" any promise made to people, Badal said, "Forget implementing the Rs 90,000-crore farm loan waiver, the government has not even released one rupee to any farmer from the Rs 3,000 crore allocated for loan waiver in the last year's budget."

Badal alleged that during the Congress rule, all promises remained "unfulfilled" due to which people suffered.

He said power tariffs had gone up by 17 times in three years from around Rs 5.50 per unit under their rule to Rs 8.5 per unit.

He said power tariffs for the industry too had gone up to Rs 9 per unit, crippling the industrial sector.

Badal alleged that the Congress Party was "squarely responsible for the desecration of religious texts" in Punjab.

He alleged that the incidents of the desecration of religious texts were a "part of a deep-rooted conspiracy to defame" the then SAD BJP government ahead of the 2017 assembly elections.

"Subsequent events have provided categorical and convincing evidence of the Congress hand in the conspiracy. The version of the key witness Surjit Singh (in the 2015 Behbal Kalan police firing incident at Faridkot) unnerved the Congress government as they knew that this would lead the trail to their house," Badal alleged.

"That is why they brazenly and shamelessly tried to destroy the evidence by putting pressure on the key witnesses to change his version, leading to his death under psychological stress," he said.

The Akalis in the past had accused a minister and a Congress MLA of mounting pressure on Surjit Singh for not deposing as a witness in this case to save some accused.

Surjit had died of cardiac arrest on January 13.