Another controversy is brewing for the SAD-BJP led Punjab Government. Months before the State Assembly polls, its image has taken a direct hit with the surfacing of Rs12,000 crore alleged food scandal with the disappearing of food grain supposed to have been bought with bank funds.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has allegedly found that food stocks worth Rs12,000 crore have gone missing from the Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns in Punjab.
The main opposition parties the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has demanded criminal investigation and judicial probe, respectively, into the matter. While the Congress has termed it as a “fit case for dismissal of the Government”, AAP has vociferously demanded probe by the sitting judge of the Supreme Court.
In a major embarrassment to the Parkash Singh Badal Government, the RBI has ordered all banks with exposure to the Punjab Government’s food borrowing programme to provide for potential losses.
Describing the development as “proverbial tip of an iceberg”, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president Capt Amarinder Singh stated that the Akali-BJP Government has survived only on deceit and fraud during the last nine year.
“It is a fit case for the dismissal as this Government has blatantly cheated and defrauded not only the financial institutions but also the farmers for whom this money was actually meant,” he said.
The former Chief Minister said that he had always been maintaining that the Government headed by the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has been playing fraud with everybody and now it has been revealed that they have even cheated the banks.
“Earlier we used to think that this money was being mainly squandered in sangat darshans, but now it seems to have been embezzled and misappropriated as well,” he said while demanding a criminal investigation into the matter after the dismissal of the Government.
“What is evident that the State Government has raised the loans against non-existing stocks or it has not bought the stocks after raising the loans from the banks and diverted and embezzled all this money,” observed PPCC chief .
This is a fit case of cheating, fraud and embezzlement, he said while pointing that this was the reason why the farmers were not getting their due payment on time even after their produce was taken away by the state purchasing agencies.
“The scandal will cast an ominous shadow on the purchase of wheat which has already started arriving in the grain markets and the ultimate sufferers will be the farmers,” he said.
Capt Amarinder said that the Government was already suffering from the credibility crisis as nobody was prepared to lend any money to it. “Now the situation will further deteriorate after the revelations about scandal as it will be difficult for the State Government to get the first instalment of Rs20,000 crore credit limit for the wheat purchase,” he apprehended.
Demanding an immediate inquiry into the missing food grains by a Special Investigating Team (SIT) headed by a sitting Supreme Court judge, AAP’s national spokesperson and Punjab Party affairs in-charge Sanjay Singh said that the Badal Government “must come clean on how the food stocks were siphoned off”.
Sanjay Singh said that the SIT should also go into the role of the Badal Government, BJP-led Central Government and the banks, who were all aware of the missing food stocks but made no effort to resolve the issue or rescue the situation.
“Our biggest worry is that if the Badal Government has failed to pay the loan to the banks, how will it pay to the Punjab farmers for their wheat crop whose procurement has already begun in the State,” said AAP MP from Sangrur Bhagwant Mann.
Bhagwant Mann said that the issue of missing stocks is a matter of serious concern given that it has happened under the watch of a financially profligate Badal Government. “Badal Government has been unable to pay the salaries of its employees and has been auctioning off Government properties to raise money,” he said.
AAP’s senior leader Chander Suta Dogra said that the State Government should also clarify how it will pay farmers in the ongoing procurement season when fresh food credit by banks is in jeopardy owing to the inability of Badal Government to clear the loans for previous years due to deficient stocks.
Dogra said that this is monumental example of mis governance by the Badal Government which is playing with the lives of lakhs of poor farmers whose only source of livelihood is money earned from procured wheat and rice.