Congress: Attempt to 'coerce' sarpanches to join AAP

Chandigarh, March 25

The Congress has slammed the AAP for stopping development projects in nearly 300 panchayats in the state and demanded immediate resumption of such works.

Taking up the issue with Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, Congress’ Qadian MLA Partap Bajwa said 11 type of grants had been withheld, including those for development, cattle fair, liquid waste management, solid waste management, memorial gates, crematoriums and burial grounds, installation of solar lights, modernisation of villages with half the population from SC community and for infrastructure gap filling scheme for optimum utilisation of assets in villages.

Even grants under the Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan or the construction of community centres in villages had been withheld, he said.

“By stopping the disbursal of these grants, the Government of Punjab will negatively impact the development of villages. It seems this action was taken to engineer defections from the Congress at the grassroots. As a party elected on a platform of change, I believed you would be the last person to encourage ‘aaya Ram, gaya Ram’ kind of politics,” he said.

Congress leaders, including Jalandhar Cantt MLA Pargat Singh, Aruna Chaudhary and Sukhjinder Randhawa, said the decision to stop grants was a direct attack on grassroots democracy and an attempt to coerce the elected sarpanches and panches to join the AAP. —