Coming down heavily on the Congress-led UPA Government, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Sunday alleged that the Centre is deliberately denying requisite infrastructure for ensuring smooth procurement of food grains from the State.
“The Centre is doing injustice with the state by denying facilities needed for smooth procurement of food grains,” Badal said reporters on the sidelines of his second day of Sangat Darshan programme.
Badal said: “The Centre has to ensure proper storage, movement and lifting of food grains, but the UPA Government has totally failed in this. Centre is not paying heed towards state Government's demands for providing necessary infrastructure, ensuring smooth procurement.”
Training his guns against the central Government, the Chief Minister said that though he had personally taken up the issue of paucity of storage facilities in the state with the UPA government, no concrete step has been taken so far to sort out the problem.
Permission for construction of new silos in the state on scientific lines is also pending with the Centre, Badal alleged, saying that the UPA Government has not ensured timely supply of gunny bags for wheat procurement.
“Not only this, but the Centre has not even bothered to ensure the timely supply of gunny bags for the procurement of wheat despite of the fact that the state government had made requisition for its supply and deposited the requisite payment too well in advance,” he added.
“This is the worst form of discrimination being meted out by the Centre with the states ruled by the opposition parties in the country….The only solution to this problem is giving more powers to the states,” he added.
Badal, replying to a query regarding ensuing Panchayati Raj elections in the state, said that Punjab government was committed to ensure free and fair elections to strengthen the democracy at grass root level.
“like all the previous elections, these polls would also be ensured in a transparent manner so that the people are able to exercise their franchise freely and fearlessly,” he added.
State Revenue and Information and Public Relations Minister Bikram Singh Majithia, who was accompanying Badal, thanked the voters, saying that Congress candidate’s crushing defeat in Moga by-election was a clear cut indication of the growing resentment amongst the people against the Congress party for its anti-poor policies.
“Fed up by growing inflation and corruption in the country, the countrymen would trounce the Congress in the coming lok Sabha polls thereby paving way for the formation of NDA Government at the Centre,” said Majithia.