Congress govt will end monopoly in transport, cable & mining: Rahul Gandhi

Rajpura/Mansa, February 15

AICC former president Rahul Gandhi has said he has learnt to only speak the truth and cannot make false promises, like other parties, adding with its vast experience, only the Congress can give a meaningful direction to Punjab.

Party Cadre to be on boards, not MLAs’ kin

AICC former president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said the Congress government, if voted to power, “will ensure posts in corporations and boards go to party workers” and not kin of MLAs. He said “only Congress workers and leaders” would be adjusted against hundreds of posts in boards and corporations. “I will ask the new CM and Punjab affairs incharge to ensure party workers, the backbone of the Congress, are adjusted,” he said.

Speaking at an election rally in support of sitting Rajpura MLA Hardial Singh Kamboj today, he said if anyone wanted to hear lies, they should listen to speeches of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Akali leader Sukhbir Singh Badal.

“When I talked about the problem of drugs during my visit in 2013, they (BJP, SAD and AAP) did not believe. They said the problem did not exist. Modi now says mothers in Punjab will not tolerate deaths due to drugs,” he said.

“I raised questions over lack of preparedness for Covid-19 and the same AAP and BJP mocked me. This led to thousands of deaths across the country due to lack of infrastructure. The mohalla clinics being widely publicised by Arvind Kejriwal suddenly vanished,” said Rahul, terming the SAD, BJP and AAP different sides of the same coin.

Accusing former CM Capt Amarinder Singh of playing into the hands of the private companies, Rahul alleged despite being asked to slash power prices, he sided with private thermal companies. “Once I got to know Capt Amarinder is hand in gloves with the BJP-led central government, we replaced him with a CM who understands the pulse of the common man,” he said.

Addressing a rally in Mansa, Rahul said the party would break the monopoly in bus, cable and mining businesses by providing bus permits to the youth, lowering cables rates to Rs 200 per month and fixing the rate of sand at Rs 1,200 per trolley.

Targeting PM Modi, he said fuel prices had been on the rise despite a drop in the international market rates. Only a handful of industrialists were benefitting from it, he claimed as he questioned the Centre for not lowering the prices when CM Charanjit Channi had slashed these by Rs 10 on petrol and Rs 5 on diesel. Slamming the AAP, he said those seeking vote saying ‘ek mauka do’ would destroy Punjab.