Akalis up the ante against govt over closure of schools
AMRITSAR: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) rank and file on Friday, staged a dharna outside the deputy commissioner’s office against Congress government’s move of closing down government primary schools in the state.
Notably, they brought school students and their parents for the protest claiming that they are set to be deprived of education.
The students also approached deputy commissioner (DC) Kamaldeep Singh Sangha and presented him with roses along with a memorandum.
In the memorandum, the students reminded the Congress government that “It should not run away from its responsibility towards them by closing their schools arbitrarily”.
Former Akali minister minister and Majitha MLA Bikram Singh Majithia led the protesters and said that in a welfare state, it was the duty of the government to provide primary education to the children.
He said that instead of expanding on the primary school network established by the previous SAD-BJP government, the Congress government had decided to shut down 800 schools, including 30 in Amritsar district.
Asking the government to rescind this decision immediately, Majithia said this would have an adverse impact on the economically-weaker sections of the society and was by nature anti-rural and anti-dalit.
HITS BACK AT CAPTAIN
When questioned by newsmen about the statement made by chief minister (CM) Captain Amarinder Singh on Thursday to proceed against him unilaterally, Majithia said, “All allegations against me have been filed in court thrice through PILs (public interest litigations) which were in reality ‘politically interested litigations’. All three were dismissed.”
“There is a law of the land which decides everything. No Congressman should think he can silence the opposition by launching a personal vendetta drive against anyone,” he said, adding,
“Congress is responsible for the attack on Shri Harmandar Sahib as well as mass genocide against the Sikh community in 1984.”
The protesting Akalis also demanded immediate revocation of the steep power hike of 10% to 12% on domestic power consumption which was being implemented with retrospective effect from April 2017.
The Akali leader also asked farmers participating in the dharna to not allow the government to install electricity meters on their tube wells.