Akalis responsible for state’s fiscal mess, says CM

CHANDIGARH: Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Friday blamed the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) for the fiscal mess in the state, claiming that party president Sukhbir Badal was trying to unleash an antipeople agenda with misleading statements against the Congress government.

In a press release issued here, the chief minister, who is in London, rejected the SAD’s charges that the state government had backtracked from its promises.

Hitting out at Sukhbir’s statement alleging the government’s non-performance over the past six months, he said the financial crisis in the state was a result of the ill-conceived and corrupt policies of the erstwhile SADBJP government.

This coupled with the delay in Goods and Service Tax (GST) contribution from the Centre led to delay in salary disbursement of government employees this month, he said.

The Badals and their associates, he said, were engaged in a brazen loot of the state exchequer during their decade of rule, leaving Punjab reeling under an unprecedented debt.

They still have the audacity to blame the Congress government for the crisis in the state, the chief minister said. He claimed that his government implemented most of the promises the party made in its manifesto and that too in the face of financial constraints.

Despite an economic crisis the state is faced with, his government had fulfilled its major promises from social welfare schemes, drugs elimination, industrial development to waiver of farm loans, he said.

The chief minister accused the SAD president of misguiding the farmers over the issues of debt waiver and kurki abolition, claiming he is playing with their lives to further his political agenda.

At the cost of facts and figures on employment, the Shiromani Akali Dal president was also trying to undermine the confidence of the youth, who were suffering the consequences of the Badal government’s total failure to protect them from the menace of drugs and unemployment, the chief minister said.