Echoing the famous slogan ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ coined by the late Prime Minister of India Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the Punjab Chief Minister Mr. Parkash Singh Badal today urged the Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi to immediately take major initiatives to pull out distressed peasantry from agrarian crisis on the lines of implementing ‘One Rank One Pension (OROP)’ for the valiant soldiers of the country.Addressing a public gathering here at sector 25 rally ground, the Chief Minister said that with the implementation of OROP, the NDA government under the leadership of Mr. Modi had fulfilled the long pending genuine demand of the Army veterans and now it was the high time to lend a helping hand to the beleaguered farmers, who have sacrificed everything at their end to make our country self reliant in food production, was already on verge of economic disaster due to retrograde farm policies of the successive Congress governments at Centre. Mr. Badal impressed upon the Prime Minister to come forward to bail out the poor peasantry already grappling with adverse economic conditions in terms of non remunerative prices coupled with ever escalating cost of agriculture inputs. “By doing so, you will not only be rewarding the hapless farmers, who had been so far marginalised or even ignored by the grave insensitivity and apathy of the previous governments but also realise the dream of late Lal Bahadur Shastri in translating this slogan into reality” he said while conveying his sentiments about the plight of farmers to Mr. Modi, from the core of his heart.
Complementing Mr. Modi for allotting several prestigious development projects to the state, the Chief Minister said that he was personally indebted to him on behalf of Punjabis for sanctioning IIM, AIIMS, Post Graduate Institute of Horticulture Research and Education, HRIDAY status to holy city of Amritsar, World Heritage status to Martyrs memorial at Jallianwala Bagh besides declaring Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Amritsar as ‘Smart Cities’. He said that Shiromani Akali Dal had been striving hard since long to empower the states but it was purely Prime Minister’s initiative to ensure ‘Cooperative Federalism’ besides enhancing states’ share in central taxes from 32% to 42% thereby giving far more financial autonomy to the states. Mr. Badal also appreciated the out of box initiative taken by the Prime Minister to replace the archaic Planning Commission of India with novel NIITI Aayog, where a governing body with Chief Ministers’ from all states as its members and all the decisions were now being taken related to development of these states with their prior consent. Mr. Badal also assured the Prime Minister that the state government would leave no stone unturned in implementation of his dream projects like Digital India, Swachh Bharat, Skill India and others.
In his address, the Prime Minister assured Mr. Badal that Punjab would be immensely benefitted from the Government of India’s decision likely to be taken shortly to permit the farmers to produce Ethanol from Maize adding he said that since Punjab was a major Maize producing state and it could easily take lead in the promotion of this emerging technology to make environment clean, green and pollution free. Mr. Modi said that he had already taken up this issue with few renowned companies to suggest a cost effective technology for the production of ethanol from Maize to enable our farmers’ to earn more profits from Maize through value addition.Prominent amongst other who were present on the occasion included Governor Punjab and Haryana Prof. Kaptaan Singh Solanki, Haryana Chief Minister Mr. Manohar Lal Khattar, Union Ministers Chaudhary Birendra Singh and Mr. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, Union Minister of state Mr. Vijay Sampla, Lok Sabha MPs Prof. Prem Singh Chandumajra, Mr. Rattan Lal Kataria and Mrs. Kirron Kher and Haryana Civil Aviation Minister Mr. Ram Bilas Sharma.