Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal today said the farm economy of the State had been endangered by the Congress government with massive power cuts and insufficient canal water, threatening to devastate the paddy crop in the State.The SAD President was here to install the new Kharar municipal committee President – Jaspreet Kaur Longia in her chair. Party constituency incharge Ranjit Singh Gill and former MP Prof Prem Singh Chandumajra was also present on the occasion. He congratulated the new team for standing up to pressure from the Congress government despite high handedness to ensure formation of a SAD led municipal committee. He also announced that once the SAD formed the next government in the State it would ensure availability of water from the Kajauli water works to Kharar besides constructing a civil hospital, bus stand and stadium in the town.Talking to newsmen, Mr Sukhbir Badal said even as the top Congress leadership was engaged in an internal feud with chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh’s chair on a rickety wicket, the farmers of the State had been left to their fate. He said farmers were barely getting four to five hours of power and that too in gaps instead of the promised eight hour uninterrupted power supply. He said for the first time ever even canal supply had been disrupted which threatened to result in the destruction of paddy crops over vast swathes in the Malwa region of the State.
Mr Badal said even as farmers were suffering, the chief minister was busy in keeping the Gandhi family happy and had accepted the directive of Rahul Gandhi to implicate the top SAD leadership in false cases. “The new SIT which was formed after the dismantling of the old one led by former IG Kunwar Vijay Pratap after it was indicted for conducting a politically motivated inquiry by the high court, is also now being run by the State Vigilance department”. He said this was clear from the manner in which Vigilance officials were included in the SIT team in direct violation of the high court orders when the SIT questioned former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal at his Chandigarh residence. “It is clear that the Vigilance Director B K Uppal and Advisor BIS Chahal, who works in conjunction with the former, are supervising the SIT probe”.The SAD President said Punjab had gone backwards during Congress rule with corruption and scams being the order of the day. He announced that once the SAD formed a government in the State in 2022 it would order a probe into all the scams and bring their perpetrators to book.Answering a media query, Mr Badal said the chief minister, who had recently approved a police job for the son of Congress legislator Fatehjang Bajwa on compassionate grounds for the alleged service done by late Satnam Singh Bajwa for the nation, should reflect on the letter he had written to Sonia Gandhi on the issue. “In the letter Capt Amarinder Singh had stated that the late Satnam Bajwa had been killed in a gang warfare connected with smuggling”.