MOGA, January 19: Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee President Capt Amarinder Singh today announced that Congress government will provide aata for Re one per kg to the poor, besides insuring the crops of the farmers against any calamity natural or otherwise. He also had a dig at the Shiromani Akali Dal-Badal for not being able to bring out a manifesto even when elections were just ten days away.
Addressing a massive public rally here today, Capt Amarinder said, under the proposed National Food Security Act, which has already been approved by the union cabinet and is being introduced in the parliament, the poor across the country will get aata for Re one per kg. It will be for far too less price than what Akalis are claiming to provide at Rs 4 per kg, albeit with the wheat provided by the government of India.
He said, even Rs 4 per kg aata was not provided by the Akalis of their own as it was government of India which is providing the state ten thousand tons of wheat every month for distributing among the people living below poverty line. “And what to speak of acknowledging it, they are claiming it to be their own”, he remarked.
The PCC President also announced that the farmers’ crops will be automatically insured by the government against any calamity. He said, the existing system of ordering girdawris after any such calamity was time consuming and hardly yielded any results. “The farmers’ crops will be insured in advance and in case of any damage caused by any calamity they will be entitled to compensation”, he said.
Having a dig at the Akalis, particularly the Badal family, he said, they were still not able to come out with an election manifesto. He said, they had no vision and no programme which they could put in the manifesto and present to the people of Punjab. “They might be finding it difficult as how to copy our manifesto so that it does not look like ours”, he remarked, while adding, by now they should have been able to come out with the manifesto as elections are just ten days away.
Referring to Sukhbir Badal’s claims of having done lot of development and an offer to show case it, Capt Amarinder pointed out that he had been asking him for last six months to quote a single instance of development but he (Sukhbir) has not been able to as there was none.
On the issue of Akalis’ claims that they had started 200 units of free power to poor and dalits, he reminded them that it was the Congress government which had started it and they (the Akalis) had stopped it. It was only at the fag-end of their tenure that they restored it after Congress pressure, he pointed out.
