Former chief minister and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) patron Parkash Singh Badal today said the Congress government had failed on all fronts during the last six months be it political, economic or religious and had not only belied the expectation of the people but even betrayed their trust.In a statement from the party head office here which he visited to interact with the party cadre, the five time chief minister said not only had the Congress government defrauded farmers, it had deceived youth and had even not cared for the religious sentiments of Punjabis. “This is not all; the Congress government has also played a cruel joke on the industry by announcing power to it at rate of Rs five per unit but not implementing this decision”. Terming the six month Congress tenure as one which witnessed empty commitments, whether made by the State cabinet or the Vidhan Sabha, Sardar Badal said “nothing is sacrosanct for this government. It announced in the Vidhan Sabha that farmer loans had been waived.
However loan of not even one farmer out of the accumulated Rs 90,000 crore loan amount has been waived. The government even announced that farmers would not be subject to kurki but it has not amended the land revenue act to make this a reality. It has even failed to give compensation to farmer suicide victims whose figure has crossed the 200 mark during the last six months”, he added.Stating that the deceitful ways of the Congress were endless, Sardar Badal said the government had even appropriated the annual placement drive of technical institutions and tried to give the impression that it was doling out jobs to youth under the ghar ghar naukari scheme. “The government has not given a single job to any unemployed youth since it has taken over the reins of the State. It has not even filled vacant government posts and is yet to regularize contractual employees. It has flatly refused to honour its promise to give unemployment allowance the youth. It is not even talking about when smart phone will be given to youth as promised”.
Asking the Congress government to tell even if one public welfare scheme had been initiated by it during the last six months, he said this alone was reason enough for Punjabis to shun the Congress in the forthcoming Gurdaspur parliamentary by-election. He said forget doing anything, even ongoing development works had been stopped. “Money sent to villages by the earlier SAD-BJP government has been recalled and even ongoing sewerage work has come to the halt in towns and cities”. The former CM said the worst sufferers in the present dispensation were the under-privileged. He said both old age pension and shagun scheme were not being distributed ever since this government took over the reins of the State. He said all social welfare schemes whether medical insurance for farmers, cycle scheme for girls or SC scholarship scheme had been stopped.Stating that the government had even failed to come to the aid of religious institutions, he said the government had not even tried to get langar seva at Sri Darbar Sahab exempted from GST at the meeting of the GST Council recently. “There has even been a spike in incidents of sacrilege under the present dispensation”, he added.Terming the six month term as a colossal failure during the course of which the government even defaulted on disbursing salaries to employees, the former CM said this six month period could be best classified as one of false promises, blatant lies, deceit and betrayal of each and every section of society.