Amloh, February 22, 2018: Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal today asked farmers not to allow installation of meters on grids, saying this was a precursor to doing away with the free power facility extended to them by S Parkash Singh Badal.
Addressing a huge rally here, the SAD President said party workers would also actively help farmers to resist any effort to install meters on power grids. He said the party would also protest against imposition of any new tax and would force the government to withdraw the same.
Asking chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh to explain why farmers and the poor were being victimised by the Congress government, he said the Congress party’s loan waiver assurance remained on paper only. He said even social welfare schemes had been discontinued after the Congress came into power. “Beneficiaries have been denied old age pension, aata- daal and Shagun since the last one year. We will start a mass movement soon to force the government to restart these welfare schemes, including distribution of fee scholarship to scheduled caste children”, he added.
Mr Badal also asked the chief minister to tell what he had achieved in one year. “Capt Amarinder said he would make Punjab drug free. Which big smuggler has he caught? He said 70 per cent of our youth were druggists. Where are they now?” He said while nothing was being done to implement any promise made to the people, Congress legislators had been given an open licence to indulge in illegal sand mining and liquor smuggling. “Goonda tax is rampant in the State and the situation is such that the Bathinda refinery management and even the Indian Air Force (IAF) have complained about this”, he added.
Speaking on the occasion, former minister Bikram Singh Majithia said chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh should have congratulated the Canada government and its MPs for passing a resolution in the Ontario assembly stating the mass violence against the Sikh community in 1984 was a genocide. “Instead of doing this he has started off on another tangent to shield his party men as well as the Gandhi family from international condemnation”. He said the chief minister had also first insulted the Canadian ministers by labelling them as terrorist sympathisers but then requested for a meeting with them when he realised that the Sikh community led by the SAD and the SGPC was going to give a rousing welcome to Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and his delegation.
Earlier both the SAD president as well as Mr Bikram Majithia appreciated the efforts of youth leader Gurpreet Singh Rajukhanna in organising the massive rally. Others who spoke on the occasion included S Darbara Singh Guru and Didar Singh Bhatti.