A day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheduled Punjab visit, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) patriarch and former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday urged him to announce an economic, political, agricultural, and territorial package for Punjab, besides probe by sitting Supreme Court judge to expose the conspiracy behind sacrilege incidents among other things.
Modi will be visiting Ferozepur, the border district of poll-bound Punjab, on Wednesday to lay the foundation stones of projects worth Rs 42,750 crore, including the Delhi-Amritsar-Katra expressway, four-laning of the Amritsar-Una highway, new rail line connecting Mukerian and Talwara towns, satellite centre of Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research at Ferozepur and medical colleges in Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur.
Notably, this will be Modi’s first visit to Punjab after the repealing of contentious farm laws. In fact, the Prime Minister is visiting the state after a gap of two years. He had last visited the state in November 2019 to open the Kartarpur Corridor on the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev. “A prime ministerial package will lend credence and respectability to your (Modi’s) visit. As PM, you will earn goodwill and my personal gratitude if before coming here you announce a package to meet the demands of the Punjabis,” said Badal.