The Punjab Chief Minister Mr. Parkash Singh Badal today blasted the Congress-led UPA Government’s decision to grant industrial tax concessions to Himcchal Pardesh, Uttrakhand and J&K and keeping Punjab out of the ambit of the package, despite repeated and earnest pleas of the Punjab government. “The UPA Government is clearly working to a plan to inflict economic devastation of the sensitive border state of Punjab through its deliberately ruinous policies. It does not require a great economist to understand that Punjab, as a land-locked state along an active and hostile international border, has a much better claim on the tax concessions being given to its neighboring states. But it has put all economic fundamentals and fiscal prudence to the sword in a single pursuit of its goal to reduce Punjabis to the status of beggars. “
Mr. Badal asked the PPCC Chief Partap Singh Bajwa to conserve some of his lung power to speak against injustice to his state by his own party. “Or is your politics limited to providing a verbal cover-fire for the deadliest assault by the Congress-led government at the center to destroy the economy of your state, root, branch and fruit?” said Mr. Badal.In a statement, the Chief Minister said, “Whenever we raise our voice against such brazen injustice, the Congress leaders in Punjab start blaming us for having a persecution complex. What do they expect Punjabis to feel under persistent and cold-blooded persecution by the center? Mr. Badal will take the issue up at the highest level again soon after his return from the water-logging-ravaged areas in and around Mukatsar district.
The Chief Minister said that he was not against concessions being given to any state but only against the denial of similar concessions to Punjab which sits in the jaws of a hostile neighboring and in proximity to disturbed conditions along our internal borders with J & K. “We only demand a level playing ground. We merely ask that we may be allowed to compete on even terms. We seek no favors, even though Punjab deserves a special package because of several historical and geographical factors.” The Chief Minister said no one who understands even the basic principles of economics, justice and fair play can fail to understand the pain from which Punjab’s cries for justice originate. Can anyone at the center or in the Congress party in Punjab give me one good reason why Punjab does not deserve the concessions being given in our neighborhood? And can Mr. Bajwa and a few other loud spokesmen of that party in Punjab explain their sepulchral silence when Punjab is being bled to death?”
Mr. Badal said that these concessions to neighboring states had not only stopped the inflow of industrial capital investment in the state but had destroyed even our existing industrial units and resulted in a flight of capital at a disastrous scale. Independent and learned economists have put the scale at nearly Rs. 25, 000 crores in only two major industrial towns of Ludhiana and Mandi Gobindgarh. On a decade long scale, the losses on Punjab by these policies run into more than one lakh crore in the form of flight of capital, direct and indirect revenues and employment dip alone. “Thousands of units across the state had shut down. Industry in Punjab has been deliberately made highly non-competitive to an extent that it can no longer survive.”