Mansa- Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal today said like in the case of Delhi, governance in Punjab had come to a standstill because chief minister Bhagwant Mann was not signing any government file for months, resulting in a complete paralysis in government work.
Mr Sukhbir Singh Badal also promised that the SAD was committed to establishing a Medical College in Mansa once it came into power in the State, while castigating the AAP government for promising to establish 16 medical colleges but not even starting work on one institution.
Talking to newsmen here, the SAD president said while two lakh school students in Delhi had not got their school uniforms, books and stationary because Arvind Kejriwal has not resigned from the post of chief minister of Delhi even after being arrested in a corruption case, education and health services and even various projects had been affected in Punjab because chief minister Bhagwant Mann was not signing important files since months. He said NOC’s for various projects were also awaiting the chief minister’s nod for months.
Urging Punjabis to punish these power hungry politicians, Mr Sukhbir Badal said “the situation has become such in Punjab that it was for the first time that salaries of various departments including health department and Punjab Police were not released till around April 25”. He said the AAP government had squandered more than Rs one thousand crores on advertisements and had even spent hundreds of crores on hiring aircraft for the use of AAP Convener Arvind Kejriwal as well as election campaigns of AAP across the country.
Stating that the AAP government had woefully failed to generate revenue, Mr Badal said “recently the government borrowed Rs 2, 500 crore by auctioning Punjab government stock during the model code of conduct”. He said AAP leaders including Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann had claimed they would increase both excise collection as well as mining fee by thousands of crores. “But instead of doing this they perpetrated an excise scam on the pattern of the Delhi excise scam and encouraged its legislators to indulge in illegal mining at the cost of the State exchequer”.
Mr Badal said the only way out of this mess was to reject both the AAP and Congress parties in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. “This will set the stage for installation of a pro-people government led by the SAD which being a regional party would always put the interests of Punjab first and work assiduously to resolve all pending issues of Punjab and Punjabis”.
Senior leaders who accompanied the SAD president included Prem Arora, Dr Nishan Singh, Gurmail Singh Phaphre, Sarbjit Singh Jhinjher, Gurpreet Singh Jhabbar and Gurpal Thekedar.