By Pardeep Luthra, Gurdaspur, April 16: The Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee President, Mr. Partap Singh Bajwa, today said the Deputy Chief Minister and the Shiromani Akali Dal President Mr. Sukhbir Singh Badal has admitted the utter failure of his own development model while projecting the Gujarat model for the entire country.
Bajwa while addressing a series of meeting in Villages Nawan Shalla, Tibri Cantt, Chawa Chowk, Purana Shalla, Talibpur Pandori, Paniar Ghanaian, Dodwan, Behrampur, Dorangla of Dina Nagar Constituency He said it was too well known a fact that the Gujarat model of Mr. Narendra Modi amounted to favouring a microscopic minority that had collapsed on the human development scale and Mr. Sukhbir Singh Badal should just go through the statistic of that state on issues like student dropout rate, malnutrition and the like. He said Gujarat was a laggard state as compared to the national average on such indices.
The PPCC chief who seeking re-election from Gurdaspur said the Congress Vice-President, Mr. Rahul Gandhi, had rightly punctured the Gujarat model by referring to the fact that Mr. Modi had only been trying to appease some select industrialists in the state by offering them land for peanuts. He said now this crony capital was funding the campaign of the Bharatiya Janata party at the national level. He said the BJP in general and Mr. Modi in particular must explain the source of money for heavy advertising in the media.
He said Punjab at one time had been the most developed state but it had lagged behind in the wake of lack of vision of Chief Minister Mr. Parkash Singh Badal and his Deputy Chief Minister son. “Mr. Sukhbir Badal has now himself conceded that it is the Gujarat model which is panacea for all the ills of the country. Here is a model which has not been given any rating by the experts”, he added.
He said The Akali Dal was trying to create a hype in the name of Mr. Modi as this government had failed to come up to the expectations of the people and implement the promises made in the manifesto due to the financial crisis in which the Badal government had landed the state in. even such like the doubling of old age pensions had not been kept. Not only that, the beneficiaries were not getting such pensions on time and the state government was faltering time and again.
He said Mr. Sukhbir Badal should tell the people as to why Mr. Modi ignored the three main issues raised by Mr. Badal at the Jagraon rally. He said Mr. Modi and the BJP manifesto were talking of inter-linking of rivers to which the Akali Dal was opposed. Similar was the situation in case of uniform civil code as the Akali Dal had been demanding a separate personnel law for the Sikhs.
He said the BJP candidate from Gurdaspur, Mr. Vinod Khanna, must explain his position on the issue of uniform civil code being advocated by his party and the inter-linking of rivers. He said the people of Punjab had a right to know his position on these issues which were considered to be very sensitive in this state.
Other who accompanied were Aruna Chaudhary MLA Dina Nagar, Ashok Chaudhary, Sucha Singh Multani, Vikram Singh Saini, Amarjit Singh Zone Incharge,Denam Singh, Kewal, Puran Singh Sarpanch, Rajunath, Tarsem Lal, Barkat Singh Sarpanch, Neeraj Salhotra, Subedar Lakhwinder Singh, Sarpanch Joginder Kaur, Tehal Singh, Sarpanch Dalbir Chand, Lambardar Charanjeet Singh, Thakur Baldev Singh, Sukhwinder Singh Chuharpur, Deewan Singh, Iqbal Singh, Balkar Singh, Dilbag Singh.