Anandpur Sahib, March 28
There would have been no better way for Captain Amarinder Singh to celebrate completion of one month in office as Chief Minister of Punjab by announcing uninterrupted (24-hour) power supply to border districts of the State from the precincts of this holy city on the sacred occasion of Hola Mohalla festival here today.

The Chief Minister, who was accorded a warm welcome on his arrival at the historic Takht Sri Kesgarh Sahib by Jathedar Manjit Singh, paid his obeisance at the Takht and was presented with a kirpan, a mounted picture of the Takht and a set of books by the Jathedar. Earlier, a siropa was presented to him by the head Granthi of the Takht at the gurdwara, making his first visit to this holy city after assuming office of the Chief Minister of Punjab a memorable one.

The Chief Minister said that he had passed the order for uninterrupted power supply to border districts in the morning and expected the Ministry of Defence to approve a special package of Rs 176 crore for immediate compensation to farmers of these districts.

Within hours of his announcement here, the Ministry of Defence announced the release of Rs 36 crore, which is 25 per cent of the amount projected by the Punjab Revenue Department as loss towards the crops as on account payment to be made to the individual farmers. Similarly, Rs 13.80 crore has been released to the Rajasthan government.

The Punjab Chief Minister reiterated the commitment of his government to wipe out corruption from Punjab and bring all cases of corrupt officials before the law. Talking about the case of Punjab Public Service Commission chief Ravi Sidhu, he said that he would not be allowed back in the Commission maintaining that the government would recommend his 101 per cent removal from the office.

“We are seeking legal opinion on this. We will have to make some ad hoc arrangement but in no case he would be allowed back in the PPSC,” the Chief Minister said maintaining that his government would indulge neither in witch hunting nor act vindictively. All genuine complaints about corruption would be dealt on merit, he added.

“We are not going to issue an ordinance just to tackle one person,” he said while referring to news reports that the State Government proposed to issue an ordinance with regard to appointment and removal of Vice-Chancellors of universities in the State. “The universities are autonomous bodies. We do not want to make any change in their statute to compromise their autonomous nature. Just to handle one Vice-Chancellor, we cannot make our universities different from those in rest of the country.”

The Chief Minister said that the Cabinet at its meeting yesterday decided to advance gram panchayat elections and hold gram panchayat, block samiti, panchayat samiti and zila parishad elections simultaneously. I am told that holding of one such election costs the state exchequer about Rs 150 crore. We cannot afford this luxury of holding one election now and the second part six or eight months later. It is why we have decided to conduct all elections — municipal and panchayat elections — in May-June this year, he said.

“An ordinance declaring the office of the Chairman of the Finance Restructuring Committee and of the Political Secretary to the Chief Minister as not offices of profit would be made soon,” he said paving the way for the clearance of the appointment of both Mr Surinder Singla and Rana Gurmeet Singh Sodhi for these offices.

The Chief Minister said that the Punjab Government would buy power from the central grid during the coming summer as the PSEB itself was short of power by about 600 MW. The 24-hour power supply to border districts would be under the Border Area Development Programme of the central government. The PSEB would be compensated for this, he said, claiming that the previous government never claimed benefits under this central government-funded scheme which could have provided funds for power, roads, bridges and infrastructure development in the border areas.

The revamping of the PSEB was complete and new members of the Board would be announced in a day or two. Two companies have already proposed to generate power in private sector in Punjab. “The Thein Dam has been ill-conceived and uneconomical. Against 40 paise a unit at Bhakra, the power generation at Thein would cost more than Rs 7 a unit,” he said.