Congress Deputy Leader in Lok Sabha Capt Amarinder Singh today said that the Modi government has started falling short of expectations it had raised among the people. He pointed out, the government was just one month in office and the people have already started facing the bitter medicine be it the exorbitant hike in the railway fare, increase in sugar and gas prices or the essential commodities.Addressing a series of public meetings at Attari, Ajnala, Amritsar Central and Amritsar North as part of his thanksgiving programme here today, Capt Amarinder said, the initial decisions of the Modi government only show lack of sensitivity towards the public good. He pointed out, the hike in the rail fare was not just exorbitant but unprecedented and unacceptable that will badly hit the common man.
He expressed his heartfelt gratitude towards the people of Amritsar for enabling him to reach to the parliament against all odds. “I understand how difficult it was for you to confront the government pressure and despite that you ensured to make me win by a huge margin of over one lakh votes”, he told a cheering crowd in Amritsar Central constituency.Similarly, he referred to the poor response of the central government towards the Iraq crisis. “While other countries swung into action to evacuate their citizens immediately, the government of India is yet to do anything and if anybody has managed to return home it was of their own efforts”, he said.
Capt Amarinder criticised the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal for his failure to rise to the occasion. He said, the least the state government could have done was to bear the travel expenses of those stranded in Iraq. “Instead what Badal did was to offer to reimburse the expenses incurred on telephone calls by the relatives”, he pointed out, while remarking this was a cruel joke.The former Chief Minister lashed out at the state government for treating the drug addicts as criminals. He said, while the drive against drug addiction was welcome but not the way the state government was trying to do. “While you are jailing and imprisoning the addicts who are the victims of misfortune, the main pedlars and suppliers were not touched”, he pointed out. He said, the war on drugs must reach its logical conclusion and the actual culprits must be brought to the book.
He was accompanied by Rana Gurjeet Singh, Sukh Sarkaria, Tarsem DC, OP Soni, Dr Raj Kumar, Harpartap Ajnala, Jugal Kishore, Major Rajbir, SS Shahbazpuri, Sunil Datti, Mamta Datta, Harjinder Thekedar, Dinesh Bassi, Gurjeet Aujla, Rajeev Bhagat, Lali Majithia, SS Kathunangal, Sardool Singh, Ranjit Chhajalwadi, Raminder Singh Rammi, Ashwani Pappu, Karamjit Rintu, Yoginder Dhinga, Raj Kamal Lucky, Sanjay Sharma, Maninder Manna, Dr Ajay Gupta, Younis Councillor, Raman Bakshi, Jatinder Sonia, Prabh Dayal Mahajan, Bhagwant Sachar, Surinder Randhawa, Arun Joshi, Bhupinder Randhawa and others.