CHANDIGARH: Former chief minister and leader of opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Monday accused the BJP-JJP coalition government of working on a policy of increasing unemployment, inflation and corruption.
"Government should cut down on scams if it wants to bring in more revenue, instead of imposing taxes that add to inflation and make life difficult for people,’’ said Hooda.
While interacting with media persons here, he said the government should prioritise the farmers' issue and repeal the three laws. The government should take the initiative and restart the process of dialogue and accept the demands of the farmers.
Taking on the government over the issue of unemployment, Hooda said SDO recruitment of the electricity department had proved that the decision of reservation of 75 per cent in the state's youth in jobs is a mere election slogan and means nothing on the ground.
“On one hand, the government claims that it will give reservation to Haryana residents in private jobs as well but the government is employing 75 per cent people from other states, instead of local youth in their own recruitment. In the SDO recruitment, the government has given preference to the youth of other states, bypassing the youth of Haryana. A total of 99 people have been selected for 90 general category posts, including nine on the waiting list. But out of these 99, only 22 youth are from Haryana,” Hooda said.
Hooda said after the general category, the BJP-JJP government is now changing the policy with the reserved categories for scheduled and backward castes.
The government is cancelling recruitments one after the other. First, the recruitment of Village Secretary, then PGT Sanskrit and now TGT English has also been cancelled, said Hooda while elaborating upon other paper leak and other scams which took place during the first and second tenure of BJP led government in the state.
“HCS, APS and promotion rights have been taken away from international level players. Under the new policy, medal-winning players will now be able to get appointments from junior coaches to deputy directors. The new policy discriminates against Para Olympic players. The appointment of Para Olympians has been restricted to Group-B posts. This is a violation of their constitutional rights,” Hooda pointed out.
The former chief minister said the state government is continuously increasing VAT on petrol-diesel to raise additional revenue and reminded that during his tenure, diesel was the cheapest in Haryana as the VAT rate on it was just 9.2 per cent.
“Now the rate is almost double and the government should understand the problem of the people. Instead of increasing inflation, they should focus on scams. If the scams stop, the income of the state will automatically increase,” he said.