‘Pak agencies trying to drop weapons into border states’
Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh spoke to Ramesh Vinayak and Navneet Sharma about several issue, including drones from Pakistan dropping weapons across the border, the state economy, and the National Register of Citizens. Edited excerpts:
How do you look at the latest incidents of Pakistan-origin drones dropping consignments of arms and ammunition in Punjab?
This is a new and serious dimension on Pakistan’s sinister designs on Punjab and Kashmir. Our intelligence is that after the abrogation of the Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir, different Pakistani agencies are trying to push in weapon consignments into the border states. We can’t do much about drones. When I met (home minister) Amit Shah recently, I talked to him about it. I don’t know whether the Indian Air Force radar can detect them or not. On these matters, we work closely with central agencies. In two-and-a-half years, we have busted 28 terrorist modules and arrested 142 terrorists. Thirty-nine AK-47S and other automatic weapons, 27 hand grenades, 147 pistols and 3.5kg RDX have been recovered.
Will terrorism come back to Punjab?
We will never allow terrorism to return to Punjab. It can’t succeed until people are party to it. There are sleeper cells that got active sometimes.
Out of the entire population of Punjab, it is not difficult for them to find a few dozen.
The Congress has gone back to Sonia Gandhi as interim president. Will that help the party reclaim lost political territory? India needs a young leadership. When Rahul [Gandhi] quit, I said in the working committee meeting that this was a wrong thing to do so, and subsequently wrote to him also that he should carry on. Young India was looking up to him. Mrs Gandhi is experienced, but Rahul should have kept going.
What is your position on the call to extend the National Register of Citizens (NRC) to all states? I’m not for it. The most shocking thing about NRC in
Assam is that some junior commissioned officers, who spent their life in the Indian Army, have been suddenly told that you’re not Indian. There they have Bangladeshi and Rohingya issues, but we don’t have that scenario here. We are not going to introduce it in Punjab. We are a secular democracy and have all lived together. Suddenly, you can’t create a dividing line. If someone has come from outside and is illegally living there, the government has the right to tell them to go.
How do you look at the first half of your five-year term?
We’ve done well. Most promises have been implemented. Just 22-23 are left, and they are related to funding. The ones related to good governance were implemented in the first six months. Debt waiver and jobs were taken up on priority. Companies such as Wipro and Infosys are giving good jobs and salaries. The income of farmers has improved by 30% due to reduction in the use of fertilisers and increase in crop production.
There is talk of economic slowdown in the country. And the Congress is also talking about it at the national level.
I’ve not felt it here. I was talking to the top management of a tractor and farm equipment manufacturing company and their sales are going up. The fact that we have got investments worth ~ 50,000 crore, not Mous but on the ground, in two years, shows that people are investing here. There is a revival of old industry. Our electricity consumption in industry has gone up. I don’t know about the rest of the country as people are saying that growth has come down. Dr Manmohan Singh’s recent speech also gave facts and figures on the slowdown. I can’t say whether it is a global or national trend. But we have not been affected in Punjab as every third day we have someone or the other meeting me to show interest in investing here.
There appears to be a game of one-upmanship on between the state government and the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) over the 550th birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Nanak.
We have told them (SGPC) that anything within the gurdwara is your domain. We will be supportive and participate. Anything outside is our domain. In the last meeting of the committee in which one of our ministers (jails minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa) went, both sides agreed to attend each other’s functions. The matter was also been discussed in the cabinet meeting and we all agreed to it.
What will be your priority in the next two-and-a-half years? Investments, and the economic revival of Punjab. We inherited a debt of Rs 2 lakh crore that has grown because we don’t have sufficient revenue to fund projects. The GST support will also end in 2022. If we don’t get all this investment, we won’t have money to pay salaries.