Capt Amarinder announces `20 cr for Sri Guru Ravidass Memorial

Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Saturday announced a grant of Rs 20 crore for establishing Sri Guru Ravidass Memorial at Khuralgarh Sahib in Hoshiarpur, besides Rs 6 crore for completion of Ambedkar Bhawan in Ludhiana.

The Chief Minister also announced a new Degree College in Buta Mandi, Jalandhar City, and establishment of Dr BR Ambedkar Chair in Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. He pointed out that the Akalis, with their anti-Dalit policies, had allowed the GNDU chair to lapse and had failed to revive it.

The Chief Minister was addressing a state-level function to commemorate the 127th birth anniversary of Dr BR Ambedkar, the Father of the Indian Constitution, which was marked by debt waiver of up to Rs 50,000 each for beneficiaries of Punjab Scheduled Castes Land Development and Finance Corporation and Punjab Backward Classes Land Development & Finance Corporation.

While Rs 45.41 crore has been waived for 14260 beneficiaries in the first category, another 1630 beneficiaries have benefitted to the tune of Rs 6.59 crore in the second category. In a token gesture, the Chief Minister handed over waiver certificates to 15 loanees -10 from SC Land Development and Finance Corporation and 5 from BC Land Development and Finance Corporation.

Referring to the large-scale bungling in the distribution of post-matric scholarship money under the previous SAD-BJP regime, Captain Amarinder said his government had ordered an audit of all such scholarship money released in the previous years, and had also decided to adopt the Aadhar-linked payment system to check any further fraud in the disbursement of funds under the post matric scholarship for Scheduled Castes and post matric scholarship for Backward Classes.

The Chief Minister also listed various other measures taken by his government for the welfare of these sections of the society in the state.

The event was attended, among others, by state Welfare Minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot, Technical Education Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and Higher Education Minister Aruna Chaudhary, besides Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar, MP Santokh Singh and MLA Raj Kumar Verka.