‘Learn from each other’: Punjab signs knowledge pact with Delhi
The pact empowers the two govts to send and receive officials, ministers to share knowledge, skills for public welfare
NEW DELHI: Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann signed on Tuesday a knowledge sharing agreement (KSA) between the two states to enable them to cooperate for public welfare.
The KSA empowers the two governments to send and receive officials, ministers and other personnel to learn and share knowledge, experience and skills for public welfare.
Kejriwal said, “We have inked a knowledge sharing agreement with the Punjab government, marking a new experiment in India’s history. We’ve resolved to learn from each other’s good deeds and practices in order to improve the lives of the people of Delhi and Punjab. This is a first of its kind initiative in the country; where the two governments will collaborate for the benefit of the people. We shall learn and pass on our good actions to one another. Cooperation and collaboration is the only way how Delhi and Punjab can progress and drive the country to success; We will fulfil Babasaheb and Sardar Bhagat Singh’s dreams together.”
Mann said Punjab will benefit from and replicate Delhi’s revolutionary endeavours. “Delhi would learn from our policies too. We will make the best use of each other’s knowledge; we will make Punjab Hasta-khelta-rangla (cheerful and colourful) Punjab again,” he said.
The document stated that the two states shall extend their cooperation in about 19 “priority areas”.
These include public health, education, environment and pollution control, water supply and sanitation, housing, tourism and hospitality, urban development, social welfare, social security, women and child development, employment and labour welfare, nutrition, power, governance reforms and any other area mutually decided by the two states.
Leader of opposition in the Delhi Assembly, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Ramvir Singh Bidhuri alleged that Kejriwal, in the name of knowledge sharing, wants to rule Punjab as well, even while he was unable to take care of Delhi.
“Kejriwal had called a meeting of the electricity officials of the Punjab government recently. Now in the name of this agreement, Kejriwal will call all the ministers and officials of the Punjab government to Delhi and sit in Delhi and run the Punjab government. The condition of the chief minister of Punjab will be that of a puppet. The problems of Delhi are no longer the focus of the Kejriemployment wal government as all their attention is on Punjab, Himachal (Pradesh), Gujarat, and Karnataka. There is an outcry for drinking water in Delhi and there has been a murder in Vasant Kunj. The fourth wave of corona has reached Delhi, but the government is saying that there is nothing to worry about,” Bidhuri said.
Responding to these allegations, Kejriwal said, “It is a knowledge sharing agreement. If a CM of one state is visiting another to learn, that doesn’t mean one government is trying to run the other. Tamil Nadu chief minister Stalin visited Delhi schools; you cannot say the TN government is being run by Delhi. It will be wrong to say that.”
Mann said Punjab is the best in agriculture and is known for its agrarian development.
“The environment minister of Delhi can visit Punjab and learn techniques and implement those in Delhi. If we had to learn from Italy, Singapore or any other country or state, we would go there to learn it and bring the same to Punjab. We don’t want to make (Punjab) Paris or London, people just want their old Punjab back,” he said.
This is a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country; where the two governments will collaborate for the benefit of the people. We shall learn and pass on our good actions to one another.
—ARVIND KEJRIWAL, DELHI CM