HE’S CONCOCTING FIGURES: SAD

CHANDIGARH : The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Sunday said local bodies minister Navjot Singh Sidhu is mouthing lies while comparing air travel expenditure of the SAD-BJP government with that of the Congress regime.

In a statement here, former minister and SAD spokesman Maheshinder Singh Grewal said Sidhu had come up with ridiculous figures of low expenditure on air travel during the last nine months of Congress rule but the fact is pilots and engineers’ salaries alone came to ₹3 crore every year whether the helicopter flew or not. “This is nothing but an example of political skullduggery for which Sidhu is famous for,” Grewal said.

minister Manpreet Badal to order an inquiry into the buying of a state chopper without bids. Contrast this with our government which has spent just ₹22 lakh on state chopper (in the last nine months) and hired chartered flights only for the governor (twice) and the chief secretary and the police chief that too in view of law and order after sentencing of the Dera Sacha Sauda chief,” he said.

Comparing the two regimes, Sidhu has only presented figures of last nine months of his government. In the 15-month rule, the state chopper had been used by the CM and his ministers. It was also used to fly out state advocate general and former Union minister P Chidambaram who came here for defending the appointment of chief principal secretary to CM, Suresh Kumar, in HC).