Medical college for Gurdaspur, new sugar mill for Batala: CM
College cleared in budget; find land for it, CM tells Jakhar; mill to replace an old one
GURDASPUR: Chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh announced a medical college for Gurdaspur and a new sugar mill in the co-operative sector in Batala while addressing a gathering of farmers from six districts at an event to disburse loan-waiver certificates of up to Rs 2 lakh each here on Thursday. He further declared that under the state government’s policy of relief to farmers, farm labourers will also be covered and will get a relief of Rs 50,000 from bank loans.
A government medical college and hospital was a longpending demand of Gurdaspur because people from here have to travel to Amritsar in case of serious diseases. It is also part of the state budget this time. The announcement came when Punjab Congress chief and local MP Sunil Jakhar made a request during the function; at this, the CM asked Jakhar to find land for it.
Nearly three decades ago, the local civil hospital was upgraded from 50 beds to 100 hoping that eventually it would be upgraded to a medical college. Former Gurdaspur Lok Sabha member and now Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa too made efforts to bring a government or even as private medical college to Gurdaspur, but to no avail. Gurdaspur has a government engineering college and an institute for hotel management.
As for the sugar mill, the state government had set up a committee for improving the existing Batala cooperative sugar mill as it has dilapidated machinery.
The CM said the committee has submitted its report that it will be of no use to renovate the existing mill as it will cost a lot, whereas setting up a new sugar mill will be cheaper and more beneficial.
As for the main agenda of the function, the loan waiver beneficiaries were 26,918 marginal farmers (owning up to 2.5 acres) from Gurdaspur, Pathankot, Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Hoshiarpur and Nawanshahr who got waiver of loans of ₹156.12 crore taken from co-operative societies and co-operative banks.
The CM said that by now 1.02 lakh farmers have been covered under the waiver scheme that is meant for marginal and small farmers (owning up to 5) acres, at a cost of ₹455 crore to the state so far.
He noted that it is unfortunate that 10.25 lakh of Punjab’s 17.5 lakh farmers are in debt. He promised a “complete” solution “as and when the state exchequer allows”.
ATTENDANCE IRONY
Later, he also took a dig at the opposition AAP and SAD MLAs boycotting parts of the recent Vidhan Sabha session over “minor differences of opinion”, and underlined that functioning of the state assembly “costs Rs 70 lakh a day”.
Commenting on 23 days of non-functioning of the Lok Sabha, he said the functioning of the Lower House of Parliament costs “Rs 9 crore a day” and the MPs “must discuss everything, instead of avoiding discussions”.
It must be underlined that Amarinder had particularly low attendance when he was most recently a member of the Lok Sabha (2014-16) before he quit and later became the CM.
NOT MENTIONED, YET BAJWA SAYS THANKS
None of the six speakers made a mention of Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa, who was absent even as he is a local. Bajwa’s younger brother Fateh Jang was among the speakers. Amarinder centred his speech around farmers and did not talk at all about the problems of drug abuse and unemployment.
Partap Bajwa, later, issued a statement in which he thanked the state government for announcing the medical college. A former president of Punjab Congress, he said the college would be beneficial for people of Pathankot too. He stressed that he had written a letter to the chief minister on February 19, urging him to set up such as college in one of the border districts. He expressed happiness that his “genuine demand has been agreed upon”.