Chandigarh, April 24: Alleging involvement of senior ruling party politicians, the Punjab Pradesh Congress has demanded a high level inquiry, preferably by the Central Bureau of Investigation, into the wastage, theft of Foodgrains and misuse of godowns of the Punjab State Warehousing Corporation to store liquor.
In a statement issued here today, the party General Secretary, Mr. Parminder Singh and Manoj Arora “Chairman Information and public relation PPCC” said these godowns were supposed to store foodgrains. He said stocks of wheat and paddy lying in the open had been rotting all these months resulting into the loss of 100 crores of rupees. These foodgrains would have been enough to feed lakhs of people liviving below the poverty line in the country.
Mr. Parminder Singh, who is also the media in charge of the PPCC, said this action of the officials was criminal and this could not have been possible without the involvement of the ruling party politicians. He pointed out it was well known that certain politicians from the Akali Dal control liquor trade in Ludhiana where liquor was found to be stored in the Warehousing Corporation godowns.
He said it was strange that the Parkash Singh Badal government had preferred to maintain silence on this sensitive issue and was giving preference to the storage of liquor over the food grains. The government had not announced even some preliminary action, what to talk of taking action against the culprits.
He said Punjab was chronically short of storage space as wheat stocks even procured earlier had been lying in the open. He said only a CBI inquiry could expose the nexus between the liquor traders patronaged by the ruling party politicians and the government employees involved in this scam.