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Badal seeks 20,000-crore package

CHANDIGARH: Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday demanded a Rs.20,000-crore package for the State to compensate for the ecological degradation it had undergone while meeting the food security needs of the country.

Mr. Badal was replying to the debate on the Governor’s address in the Punjab Assembly, where he emphasised that be it the freedom struggle, food shortage, foreign aggression or defending the rights of the citizens, the people of Punjab had never turned their back on any challenge.

He said at a time when the Centre was flush with finance, it was time to compensate for the losses Punjab had incurred.

Though Mr. Badal did not spell out the formula used to reach the figure, he said Rs.20,000 crore would be utilised for strengthening the irrigation and power infrastructure as well as dealing with the problems of soil degradation and pollution of ground water.

Before the entire Opposition staged a walkout, Mr. Badal reeled out instances to allege that Punjab faced discrimination, betrayal and oppression whenever the Congress controlled power at the Centre. He said the Centre’s latest announcement of the Rs.60,000-crore farm loan waiver was “too little and too late” – “only another addition to the long list of injustices against Punjab”.

He said Punjab accounted for just one per cent of the three crore farmers across the country who would benefit from the loan waiver announced in the Union Budget.

Mr. Badal said that the policy of systematic de-federalisation of polity by the Congress had resulted in widespread poverty, illiteracy and lopsided development in the country which was at the root of the violent tendencies. "Successive Congress governments at the Centre, with willing and liberal support of their ruling units in different States, have persistently distorted the Constitution to drain every drop of federal energy and turn it into a unitary monolith. The result has been not only a complete disconnect between the Union government and the masses but also the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor,” he added.

Denying allegations of political vendetta, the Chief Minister said such a negative programme could never be a policy of the ruling Akali-BJP alliance.

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Badal seeks 20,000-crore package

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