The Shiromani Akali Dal described the snatching of Chandigarh from Punjab as a demographic and statistical fraud committed by the Centre government with the state and said that Punjab was the only state of the country which as facing discrimination at the hands of the successive governments at the Centre.
Resuming his speech on the motion of thanks to the Governor’s address in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha, the SAD MLA from Rupnagar and Secretary and Spokesman of the party, Dr. Daljit Singh Cheema said that the Punjab was the only state which was not reorganised at the time of the reorganisation of the states on the linguistic basis. He said that centre continued to play fraud with the state regarding the Chandigarh issue. He said that it was on January 29th, 1970 when the Government of India had announced that Chandigarh would go to Punjab. Later as per the clause of the Rajiv-Longowal accord Chandigarh was to be transferred to Punjab by January 26, 1986. Then again on June 21, 1986 another deadline was fixed for transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab.
He said that in reality Centre was never interested in transferring Chandigarh to Punjab so it postponed the deadlines one after the other. He said that it was strange that states reorganisation commission (1954-55) had taken into consideration all the census reports from 1881 by it case of Punjab only the census of 1961 was made the basis. He said that census migration report 1971 had made it abundantly clear that Chandigarh was the wholly Punjabi speaking in 1961 but the centre government ran away from it commitments regarding the capital of the state.
Strongly condemning the centre for it policy of abolishing the subsidies for the agriculture sector, Dr. Cheema wondered that the farmers of the state who made the country self reliant in the food security are till date being punished for their hard work which produced highest yield of wheat and rice against the national average. He said that regular increase in the price of diesel and policy to adopt mineral base subsidy has resulted in escalation of price of DAP and other nutrients at alarming level rendering the agriculture sector as a liability rather than occupation.
He said that although the stagnation in the agriculture sector was a worldwide phenomenon but the centre has failed to pay heed to the need of persification in this sector. He said that the Punjab had demanded Rs. 5000 crore for crop persification to save peasantry from running which is reeling under heavy debts due to wrong policies of the centre government and this august house had also passed a resolution to this effect but centre ridiculed the needs of the farmers and announced Rs. 500 crore fund for the entire country.
Coming down heavily on the Congress led UPA for going overboard to protect the guilty of the 1984 anti sikh carnage in Delhi and other cities of the country, the SAD leader said that it was strange that the Prime Minister of the country had himself admitted in the Parliament that his ‘head bows with shame’ on this carnage but still he and his party had resorted to every tactics to protect the main culprits including Jagdish Tytler, Sajjan Kumar and others. He said that how can one expect justice when the Delhi government has gone all out to release Kishori Lal who was convicted for death sentence in three cases and life term in four cases regarding merciless killing of Sikhs in Delhi.Dr. Cheema said that the people of Punjab are wise enough to understand the discrimination of the Centre in each and every field with Punjab and they would teach Congress party a life time lesson in the coming Parliamentary polls for its this bias.