Ruling Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab today declared 2016 as 'Year of Peace and Development' (Aman te Vikas Varsh) and dared opposition outfits to make peace and development their planks for the 2017 Assembly polls.
Stating that Congress and other groups opposed to SAD have run out of ideas, party general secretary Harcharan Singh Bains alleged that opposition was using their energies to focus on some stray incidents to "stay in the news".
"On the contrary, we will go to the people with a performance sheet of the works done by us over the last 10 years especially those during the current tenure," he said in a statement here.
Bains said the government has focused all its energies on development and results were there for everyone to see giving SAD the confidence to seek a vote on performance in the forthcoming poll in Khadoor Sahib and later in the general elections to the assembly.
"From making Punjab a power surplus state to putting it on the international aviation map and ensuring direct jobs, and bringing more than one lakh crore worth of investment through two Punjab Progressive Summits alone and creating employment avenues for another five lakhs during this tenure alone, we have so much positive to talk about that we hardly have the time to indulge in negative agenda, finding faults with our opponents," he said.
Bains said people would judge the government on its work and "not on the basis of what we say about the tantrums and stunts which the Congress and others indulge in."
"Our performance on the peace and development fronts will be our agenda and that will be our manifesto," he added.
