SAYS THE COUNTRY IS BURNING: DEMANDS AGRICULTURAL ‘SEZ’ STATUS FOR THE ENTIRE STATE: WARNS OF "OMINOUS NAXALITE THREAT": LASHES OUT AT UNION FM’S REMARK ABOUT INFLATION GOING EVEN HIGHER
Ludhiana August 15 – The Punjab Chief Minister Mr. Parkash Singh Badal today pulling all stops in an all-out attack against the Congress-led UPA government at the centre, asking it to either "control or quit." In a scathing broadside, Mr. Badal said that the present government at the centre had brought the country to an "explosively dangerous" stage. "India is burning and the UPA government is sleeping smugly," said the Chief Minister.
Mr. Badal was addressing media persons after presiding over the state level Independence Day function here this afternoon.
Mr. Badal also demanded that the entire Punjab state be treated as a "Special Econmic Zone" (SEZ) for agriculture and asked the centre to bear the cost of free electricity to farmers and of canal rejuvenation in Punjab as the country was meeting almost seventy percent of its food requirements from the food grain produced by Punjabi farmers.
The Chief Minister said that things were really spiraling out of centre control and the country was faced with the specter of being at war with itself. "There is virtually a siege within and India is being apart with communal and class conflicts and the centre was busy dishing out figures on its achievements. "Every nook and corner of the country is in flames. The centre has failed to address itself to a solution to even one of the communally troubled spots, with Jammu and Kashmir standing out as a crying testimony to the failure of the UPA government to operationalise political processes to resolve the tangle which was the creation of its own opportunistic approach in the first place," said Mr. Badal.
The Chief Minister warned against what he described as "the ominous drift of the country towards Naxalite violence. He said that the government was not even trying to get to the roots of he problem, let alone removing those. The roots, he said, lay in economic disparities, burgeoning unemployment and utter poverty among the overwhelming segment of the population and the failure of he system to put in place avenues for constructive release of youth energy.’
Taking a strong exception to the amazing utterances of Union Finance Minister Mr.P.Chidambaram related to the soaring inflation which had already crossed 13% mark, Mr. Badal said that it was amazing that the Finance Minister was still talking of inflation and price rise going even higher. Mr. Badal said that the spiraling inflation is the direct out come of the Centre’s failure to evolve and implement people oriented policies.
Asked to comment on the implementation of the fifth Punjab Pay Commission Report in the wake of the acceptation of 6th Central Pay Commission’s recommendations by the GoI, Mr. Badal said that whenever our commission’s report was ready we would also implement the same with in no time. He reiterated that the interests of the employees would be safeguarded on the top priority as they all were loved ones to us. He pointed out that it was always during the tenure of SAD-BJP government as for as the implementation of the new scales to its employees was concerned. He also mentioned that if the need be the state government could ask the commission to submit its report earlier.
Referring to the unprecedented rains in the state over past few days, Mr. Badal said that all the Commissioners and Deputy Commissioners besides the drainage wing of the irrigation department had been directed to make all out efforts to effectively to fight out the situation like floods. He ridiculed Centre for its policy on the compensation for natural calamities as its stringent norms did not encompass the beneficiaries who had suffered substantial damage to their shops in the Hoshiarpur city where furniture and grocery items worth Rs.lacs had been vanished but they were eligible merely for Rs.2000 as relief according to GoI’s norms.