TALWANDI SABO: Facing heat over its pre-poll promise of complete farm debt waiver in Punjab, the Congress government has claimed that loans of 10 lakh farmers would be written off by September. The loans of primary agricultural cooperative societies (PACS) of up to Rs 2 lakh of small and marginal farmers were being waived, Punjab finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal stated this on Saturday while presiding over Baisakhi conference at Talwandi Sabo.
He claimed that fulfilling the promise made to the farmers was high on agenda of the state government and it was being done even by borrowing money from various sources. He assured the farmers to keep faith in the government which was working for their welfare. The finance minister had kept an allocation of Rs 4,250 crore for debt waiver in the state budget for 2018-19. The debt waiver was started at Mansa on January 7 and the fourth edition was held at Sangrur village on April 12.
Speaking on the occasion, Manpreet also mocked at the claim of SAD president
Sukhbir Badal that the Congress did not know how to run the state treasury and government coffers always used to remain full during the previous SAD-BJP government.
Manpreet said Sukhbir had no idea of the economics, he only played politics in everything. “The Congress government is trying hard to somehow run the day-to-day affairs of the state by curtailing the expenditure as Akalis left the treasury empty. When Akalis relinquished power in March 2017, we were facing an expenditure of 102 paise against an income of 100 paisa, which we have limited to 88% in one year by curtailing expenses. We will take it further to 50% in the next four years. Sukhbir now claims to give him two months to streamline the treasury, which he could not do in 10 years.”
The finance minister said that the Akalis claimed to be sympathisers of farmers but during their tenure, they had ‘even eaten up the crop seeds’ — pointing towards sale of sale of spurious cotton seeds in 2015. He said, “If the Akalis are so sympathetic towards Punjab, why the party is not pulling out
Harsimrat Kaur Badal from the NDA government, which has not waived GST on langar items of Harmandar Sahib. She should have quit as
Andhra Pradesh ministers have resigned while demanding special status for their state.”
Manpreet also lambasted the Modi government of claiming India to make ‘Congress mukt’. He said that it was the Congress, which provided voting rights to all and had taken India to great heights but BJP-RSS leaders never spent even a night in jails during the freedom struggle.
