M A I N   N E W S

Sonia terms Punjab Govt ‘anti-poor’
Dharmendra Joshi/TNS

She said the Centre had provided funds of several thousand crores to the SAD-BJP government but it did not allow these funds to reach to the common man. Giving figures, she said the Centre provided Rs 5,000 crore under the MGNREGA scheme, but the SAD-BJP government utilised only Rs 526 crore. Had the Centre not provided it the money, the SAD-BJP government would have to put an end to its atta-dal scheme, she added.

Flaying the SAD-BJP government time and again in her address, Sonia alleged it had not cared even a bit for the poor. Had this government cared for the poor, the number of BPL families could not have increased during the past five years of its rule. It formed only those policies that benefited the people in the government and their confidants, she added. All sections of the society, including farmers and industrialists, had been fed up with the SAD-BJP government, she alleged.

Farmers of the Doaba region were forced to throw their potato produce on the roads in Jalandhar, whereas the industrialists were also left with no option but to shift their units outside Punjab due to the wrong policies of the state government, she said.

Alleging that the SAD-BJP government could not even discharge its basic responsibility towards the public, she said the condition of schools and hospitals was also very bad here. Even the atrocities on women had increased manifold during its rule, she added.

Whatever development the state had seen since Independence was during the Congress regimes only, she claimed. Be it the RCF at Kapurthala or big dams in Punjab, they were built by the Congress governments, she said.

Only recently, PM Manmohan Singh got the refinery in Punjab functional by getting removed the hindrances in its commissioning, she said. The voters would have to decide whether they wanted to take Punjab forward or backward, she said.