PPCC president and Congress Gurdaspur candidate Sunil Jakhar on Monday said that the country needs a people-friendly, strong government capable of protecting our territory, without war, and only Congress was capable of forming such govt.Addressing ex-servicemen’s meeting and other rallies in the constituency Mr. Jakhar questioned the Prime Minister on the issue of terrorist attacks in Kashmir and asked the BJP-led government to fix the responsibility of such incidents that happened during its rule. Prime Minister Modi can’t escape from the responsibility of his failure to stop such attacks by militants in Kashmir.Jakhar said that we had become a nuclear power several decades ago, but earlier no Prime Minister indulged in such a childish talk about use of nuclear weapons. PM Modi for the first time was talking about nuclear weapons in poll rallies which severely disgrace the image of India at international platform.He said that the Prime Minister was escalating tension with neighboring countries to divert attention from the issue of demonetization, GST, unemployment, poverty and decline in growth in agriculture sector. Everybody knows that in case of war with Pakistan only Punjab and other border states suffer, Jakhar said.He said that youth needs employment, farmers want remunerative price for crops, poor want food, but Modi was trying to mislead the people by talking about nuclear bombs.
“Instead of increasing the income of the farmers, the Modi government has further reduced their earning, as it had imposed GST on the agricultural inputs. Narender Modi got votes in the name of poverty in 2014-polls but when the BJP came to power, it forgot the poor and its government turned loyal to only few capitalists.Referring to the initiatives taken by the Punjab government, Mr. Sunil Jakhar said that Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh is a soldier first and then he is the Chief Minister. State govt launched a Guardians of Governance (GoG) scheme under which ex-servicemen from army were deployed to monitor the public welfare schemes of the government. Punjab government has also arranged training for the youth to facilitate recruitment in the army, he added.Jakhar also shared the work done by state government in Gurdaspur constituency during his 16-month tenure as MP. He said that in the record time of ten months, a PepsiCo factory has been set up at a cost of Rs. 1200 crores, which would provide employment to 5000 people.Sharing his future agenda Mr. Jakhar said he wants to establish such more factories in this border belt to provide maximum employment to local youth. A college for girls was approved at Jugial while process has already been completed before election announcement to establish an ITI at Niari village of Pathankot District. He informed that AICC general secretary Mrs. Priyanka Gandhi will visit Pathankot on May 14 along with Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh for election campaigning. EOM