Punjab Congress on Thursday lashed out at the Badal Government for closing down the refugee camps in the border areas without making arrangements for the displaced residents to return to their homes.
“The residents, who were earlier forced to evacuate from their villages, have now been rendered homeless as a result of this. The people are facing a harrowing time,” said Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president Capt Amarinder Singh.
He pointed that the Akali workers have also been withdrawn from these camps, causing the displaced residents to be left out in the open, without a roof on their heads. The former chief minister, reacting strongly to the reports about closure of camps and withdrawal of the ruling party workers from there, said that the move reflected the total apathy of the Badal government in the state towards the people forcibly evacuated from the border villages.
Amarinder said that the extent of the state government’s mismanagement of the border issue was appalling and clearly showed that the political dispensation in the state was totally unconcerned about the plight of the poor people of the state.
“While Badal and his team are busy in promoting their vested interests, lakhs of people around the state are being subjected to all kinds of hardships,” said the former chief minister.
Residents of the border areas, in particular, were being subjected to all kinds of problems since being displaced from their villages in the midst of the war hysteria whipped up by the Badal government, said Capt Amarinder.
He added, “From facing loss of their crops ready for harvesting, to becoming homeless, they are suffering a host of problems, all of which are of the Badal government’s making.”