Ahead of PM's visit, Badal seeks economic & agricultural package
Darpan News Desk IANS, 04 Jan, 2022 12:12 PM
Chandigarh, Jan 4 (IANS) Five-time Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to create the right atmosphere for his much-delayed visit to Punjab by first taking some concrete steps to expose the conspiracy behind the on-going incidents of sacrilege against Sikh faith and resolving the other major political, religious and economic issues facing the state.
Badal in a statement here listed five major issues on which he said a prime ministerial package would lend credence and respectability to Modi's visit to Punjab on January 5.
"As the PM, you would earn a lot of goodwill and my personal gratitude, if before coming here, you announce an economic, political, agricultural and territorial package to meet the demands of the Punjabis."
The former CM also drew the PM's attention to thousands of Sikh families awaiting justice for the massacre of 1984.
Badal said the PM's visit would then truly be a welcome gesture and would heal many past wounds inflicted by successive Congress governments.
The Shiromani Akali Dal supremo said he was making this request on the eve of the PM's visit "just to remind him of his sacred obligations" to the country's food bowl and sword arm, Punjab.
The elderly Badal also demanded a major agricultural economic package to pull the farmers out of the tragic crisis into which they have sunk as a result of agricultural indebtedness.
He said the visit of the PM to the state was always welcome despite being too close to elections to sound genuine.
"But it would be a great gesture if you go beyond optics and announce steps like an inquiry by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court to go into the conspiracy behind the painful series of sacrilegious incidents against Sikh faith and address other issues facing the people of the state."
Badal asked the PM to heed the expectations of Punjabis on the resolution of their other long-standing major demands, including the transfer of Chandigarh and other Punjabi- speaking areas and the resolution of the river waters issue along Riparian principle.
He also drew the attention of the PM to the loss of over 800 lives in the struggle against the three back laws on agriculture and said that these sacrifices must be acknowledged by concrete gestures by the Union government to help their families.
The Punjab government on Friday ordered a probe into former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's relations with his Pakistani woman friend Aroosa Alam and her relation with the ISI. Deputy Chief Minister Sukhjinder Randhawa said the government would probe the ISI links of Aroosa Alam.
Raising the demand at a meeting with Union Health and Chemicals and Fertiliser Minister Mansukh L. Mandaviya, Badal said it is equally important to diversify Punjab's economy as well as its agriculture.
Senior advocate Dushyant Dave, representing the farmers' group, submitted before a bench headed by justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul that road blockade would end, if permission is granted to continue the protest either at Ramlila Maidan or Jantar Mantar.
Farmers protesting on the Ghazipur border at Delhi for the last 11 months against the three farm laws enacted by the Centre last year, have started to open the service lane to ease the traffic. They said it is the police who have closed the road and not them. Farmers belonging to the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) on Thursday started removing the tents built on the service road to start the traffic movement.
Two days after announcing to launch his own political outfit to serve the interests of the people, two-time Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Thursday slammed AICC general secretary Harish Rawat, saying the party has damaged its own interests by not trusting him and giving the party into the hands of an 'unstable person' like Navjot Sidhu.
The data comes on a day when India reached the milestone of 100 crore vaccinations, and demonstrates that lack of vaccine hesitancy has played a big role in achieving this number.
