Demanding withdrawal of additional tax burden imposed on the people from this month, Punjab Congress on Thursday also demanded a special audit of unproductive expenditure being resorted to by Parkash Singh Badal-led state government.
“These taxes which have become effective with immediate effect include regularization fee for colonies, additional cess on food grains, fee for the regularization of marriage palaces and processing fee on VAT dealers etc to mop up about Rs 4,000 crore should be withdrawn,” said the party terming the same as “inflationary”.
“SAD-BJP combine has been targeting the UPA Government for price rise while ignoring the fact that the alliance government in Punjab is adding to the people’s misery by way of additional taxes which add to the cost of living and wasting money thus mobilized on unproductive programmes like Sangat Darshan which had turned into Akali programmes,” said party spokesperson Rajanbir Singh.
He added that public finances should be utilized for making investment which leads to capital formation and thereby opening up of more and more employment avenues to absorb the growing army of the unemployed in the sensitive State.