Lashing out at the Prime Minister’s deliberate silence on SYL during his speech in Bathinda, Punjab Congress president Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday rejected as provocative posturing Narendra Modi’s assertion that he would stop every drop of water that flows to Pakistan from India.In a statement, Captain Amarinder accused Modi indulging in 'electoral jumlebazi' by making such promises, especially in view of the fact that the BJP-SAD alliance led by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had sold off Punjab’s water rights to Haryana for personal gains.Captain Amarinder accused Modi of trying to whip up war hysteria through such provocative statements against Pakistan, while continuing to befool the people over demonetisation despite having partially rolled back the scheme in the face of total collapse of the Indian economy as a result of his irrational move.Reacting to Modi’s speech at the foundation stone laying ceremony for AIIMS at Bathinda, Captain Amarinder said it was evident that Modi was looking for excuses to escalate tensions at the border in order to create war hysteria to grab political mileage and divert public attention from other critical issues ahead of Assembly polls in Punjab and four other states. His unnecessary reference to the surgical strikes, which he said showed Pakistan what the Indian Army was capable of, was also aimed at triggering a similar provocative reaction, said Captain Amarinder.
Modi’s clarion call that he was ready to bring every drop Indus water from Pakistan to meet the water needs of Punjab was clearly designed to provoke the people, who had been adversely hit by the SYL verdict, for which the Badal government was squarely to blame, said Captain Amarinder. Ironically, while talking of the water crisis in Punjab, the prime minister conveniently chose to ignore the SYL issue, which threatens to plunge the state into a bigger water crisis than ever before, he added.Captain Amarinder also came down heavily on the prime minister’s shameless brazenness in appealing to the people for support in his demonetisation programme after having put them to unprecedented hardships. “What is the point of appealing for public support after so many people have died as a result of your unplanned initiative and many others have been deprived of their means of survival?” he asked Modi, adding that by now allowing old 500 rupee notes to be accepted for transactions till December 15, the prime minister had virtually admitted that his demonetisation move was a complete failure.
Lashing out at Modi’s exhortation that the people should move to mobile banking and stop using cash, Captain Amarinder said this kind of `jumlebazi’ would not fill the stomachs of the hungry nor give back jobs to those who have been laid off as a result of the cash crisis triggered by demonetisation. “Nor is it going to bring back from the dead all those who have lost their lives to the needless and unnecessary move by Modi,” said Captain Amarinder, adding that it was futile to talk of cashless transactions in a country like India, where thousands still did not have bank accounts.Even Badal seemed to have picked up Modi’s jumlebazi, said the PPCC president, referring to the chief minister’s promise of doubling the income of all Punjabis in five years, a la the prime minister’s promise of doubling rural incomes by 2022. Making false promises seems to be in the Badals’ blood, said Captain Amarinder, referring to a host of promises the Badals had made during the last elections but had miserably failed to fulfill, including employment creation, uplift of the industries and rural development. Far from enabling progress in the state, things have been on a downward spiral since the Akalis took over the state’s reigns, he said, pointing out that the last 10 years had witnessed a fiscal deficit increase of 500%, while agriculture growth rate has decline from 4% to -0.75% and industry growth rate has come down from 21.4% to 2.1%.“If this is the kind of development that Modi and the Badals have envisaged for Punjab in the future too, then let me tell them, the people of the state are not going to give them an opportunity to play with their lives any longer,” said the Punjab Congress president.