Chandigarh, May 7, 2020 - The Punjab government under the able guidance of Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh has fared excellent in addressing various serious issues amid COVID crises, said SMS Sandhu, Chairman of Punjab Information and Communication Technology Limited.
Besides fighting the deadly infection, Capt. Amarinder Singh has taken various bold steps including bringing the devotees back home, curtailing migrants exodus, procurement of wheat and facilitating industrialists to start operation in their factories, he added.
Sandhu in a press statement issued here today , stated that sensing the gravity of the situation Capt. Amarinder Singh took wise decision to impose a curfew and lockdown in the state and became the first Chief Minister after Kerala CM to do so.
To motivate the frontline Corona warriors, the Chief Minister is personally talking (by making video calls) to officials and employees of various departments including health, police, sanitation workers and many others regularly, said Sandhu adding that the state is able to restrict the spread of the coronavirus.
To bring back the Sikh devotees from the all the religious places including Nanded Sahib, the Chief Minister raised the issue with the union government and Maharashtra government and then brought the devotees back to their home state.
Though the Akali Dal tried to take all this but when the transmission of the deadly Virus started travelling from labourers to devotees, instead of owning the responsibility, the Akalis went in hibernation, he added.
Due to lockdown since there was no business going on in the state like Industry, Excise, VAT, registration of sale, purchase the income to the exchequer went down by more than 85% and with no money in the treasury it was very hard to run the state, he said adding that the CM very boldly raised all the issues with the central government along with the GST and successfully resolved (GST partially). As a result, if we talk about wheat procurement, the state has procured 90% of the target which is much ahead of its schedule, where as the opposition parties tried hard to criticize the plan and policies framed by the government he said.
During this period all the political parties and opposition tried to put forth the negative agenda against the decisions taken by the Capt. Amarinder Singh led Congress government without analysing, but the results are seen on the ground. The Punjab fared very well in addressing the issues in well planned manner, he added.
This is the time for all parties to leave behind the political agendas and support the Punjab government and the Chief Minister so that we could fight the Covid 19 boldly and victorious sooner than later, he opined.