CHANDIGARH: Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh accused the Centre on Wednesday of step-motherly treatment towards the state and expressed concern over the role of the governor, who has still not forwarded the state amendment bills to the President weeks after they were presented to him following their unanimous passage in the Vidhan Sabha. He also trashed allegations of “anti-nationalism” and “urban naxalism” against Punjab’s farmers.
The CM made it plain that he said he was not in Delhi to confront the Centre but to fight for justice for farmers whose livelihood was at stake due to the central farm laws.
During an informal media interaction at Rajghat, he lamented that the President had declined to give him and other Punjab legislators time to draw his attention to their concerns. “He is the head of the nation, and we wanted to tell him about the situation in Punjab and hoped that he would talk to the central government,” Amarinder said.
Accompanied by Congress MPs from Punjab, who alone were given permission by the Delhi police to visit Rajghat with him, Amarinder said the state had not been paid GST dues since March, its constitutional guarantee of Rs 10 crore was pending and the Disaster Relief Fund had been stopped by the Centre. “We don’t have money, our coal stocks are over,” he said, and asked, “How can we survive in this situation?”
He recalled that during Dr Manmohan Singh’s tenure as PM, he had once asked him why he was giving so much to the Akalis in Punjab, and he had replied that as the leader of the central government he had to treat everyone equally. Amarinder said he hoped the present government at the Centre would also adopt a similar approach towards the state government.
The Punjab CM told the media that he had spoken to railway minister Piyush Goyal, who had asked for a guarantee of safety for goods trains, but the farmers had eventually themselves allowed movement of supplies, except for two private plants where they were still blocking the lines to the coal shutters.