Punjab budget today: Oppn calls it ‘sham’, seeks last yr’s report card

Ludhiana: Ahead of the Aam Aadmi Party-led state government’s budget on Friday, the opposition parties on Thursday launched a scathing attack on the party. Criticising the party for not fulfilling promises made in their last budget, the opposition said the new budget would be an “eyewash” too.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is unhappy over the projects which were later scrapped by the AAP government.
BJP state general secretary Jiwan Gupta said, “Budget of the AAP government is going to be only an eyewash just like last year’s budget, in which only false promises were made to the people, especially the industry. During the 2022 budget, AAP had committed to develop a textile park in 950 acres in Ludhiana’s Koom Kalan, and few months later scrapped this project leaving the industrialists in a lurch. Similarly, the government had also announced setting up of integrated manufacturing cluster in 1,100 acres at Rajpura, but it has been more than nine months since the announcement was made, but there is no information on the project.”
The Shiromani Akali Dal too demanded a report on the projects announced by the AAP last year.
Former SAD MLA Ranjit Singh Dhillon said, “People should not keep any high hopes from AAP’s budget as in a year in Punjab, the party has proven it is totally insensitive towards the demands and aspirations of the people. It would have been better had the AAP government first issued a white paper on how many commitments in the last year’s budget it has fulfilled, and then announced this year’s budget.”
The Congress party is also unhappy over the economic state of Punjab.
Lashing out against the AAP, Congress district president Sanjay Talwar said, “It is laughable that the government whose treasury is totally empty and is looking for chor darwajas to fill its coffers, is going to announce its budget. Every small effort made by the Congress government to resurrect Punjab’s economy have totally gone to vain ever since this government, controlled by remote control from Delhi, came into power. We have no hopes from this budget except for that this is going to be a sham.”
But the AAP believes the opposition is merely acting out of frustration on losing the Punjab assembly elections “miserably”.
While criticising the opponents, AAP MLA Gurpreet Singh Gogi said, “The reaction of opposition parties coming in for the budget which is yet to be announced speaks a lot about their frustration after losing the assembly elections miserably, last year.”
The AAP believes the budget would be the best the state has ever seen and called it a people-friendly budget.
Gogi added: “Our budget is going to be the best budget for Punjab ever as all our senior leaders headed by chief minister and finance minister have prepared a people-friendly budget, in which the aspirations of all sectio; ns of society will be fulfilled.”