Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal on Tuesday blamed the Congress party for giving undue bad name to the State on the issues of drugs and State economy. Armed with facts and figures depicting actual financial health of the State during debate on budget, Sukhbir detailed how Congress defamed Punjab.
“Congress vice-president had initiated this defamation exercise by blaming that 70 percent of the Punjab youth are drug addicts. This despite the GNDU study that 70 percent of the sample study of drug addicts were youths,” he said.
“Punjab Congress has done a great disservice to the State,” he said while stressing that it was continuing its exercise to defame Punjab and Punjabis despite knowing that its vice president had released false information on drug addiction.
“I decided to take on the false propaganda boldly and reached out the people to tell the true facts as I realised that this is affecting Punjab’s image,” he said. Sukhbir, at the same time, refuted allegations of the opposition leaders that Akali-BJP Government and Deputy Chief Minister were in habit of making castles in the air.
Stumping the opposition by asking them if they could recall a single major development work or any social welfare scheme launched by the erstwhile Congress Government during 2002-2007, Sukhbir said that all landmark projects and schemes had been initiated during the SAD-BJP rule since 2007.
“Punjab has been made power surplus and major projects including Bathinda Refinery, Mohali International Airport has come into reality…From free power supply to farmers and subsidizing power to SC families, innovative scheme like Atta-Dal, Shagun Scheme, Bhagat Puran Singh Health Scheme and Sports Kits distribution have been initiated,” said Sukhbir.
Thanking the Centre for giving special attention towards Punjab, he said that Centre has done a lot for the State and trucks loaded of money have come to the Punjab.
Sukhbir, talking about State’s fiscal health, said: “We have increased VAT collection by 31.07 per cent against 13 per cent by the previous Congress Government besides bringing excise collection to Rs5700 crore from Rs1368 crore in 2007.”
He said that during Congress Government, fiscal deficit was 6.29 per cent which was now only at 2.98 per cent, “and well within the limit set by the thirteenth Finance Commission”.
Saying that “productive debt was always good”, Sukhbir said that Punjab have registered 100 per cent growth rate in debt against 128 per cent in Kerala, 140 per cent in Andhra Pradesh, 103 per cent in Gujrat. He also congratulated the Finance Minister for bringing debt at 31 per cent of the GDP against the Finance Commission’s target of 38 percent.
Proposing to pass the state budget proposals, Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa maintained that Punjab would be biggest beneficiary as the Centre has decided to focus on infrastructure and the state would get huge benefit with Rs30,000 crore to be spent on national highways. Dhindsa also announced setting up of Rs5.50 crore funds for the NRIs, who want to develop their villages, as State’s share.