Acting on his words of taking up all the issues, concerning Punjab with the Union Ministers personally, State Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal met five Union Ministers taking up number of significant issues, including debt waiver, power situation, cleaning of rivers, debt relief package for farmers, among other things.
SEEKS SPECIAl FINANCIAl PACKAGE
Calling on the Union Finance and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley, Badal sought a special financial package for the State including the reimbursement of Rs2,694 crore already repaid out of special term loan besides waiver of Rs298 crore being demanded by the Ministry of Home Affairs on count of expenditure incurred on paramilitary forces deployed during militancy period from 1980 to 1995 in the State. Chief Minister also impressed upon Jaitley to release an amount of Rs5,000 crore as non-plan grant for the current financial year till the 14th Finance Commission’s report was out.
SEEKS SETTlING Rs10,000 CR OUTSTANDING DUES
Seeking his “immediate” intervention in settlement of outstanding dues of nearly
Rs10,000 crore of the State procurement agencies pending with the Food Corporation of India since long time, Badal urged the Union Minister to constitute an empowered committee in this regard to resolve this long pending issue once for all, to which Jaitley agreed.
PlEADS FOR DEBT WAIVER OF Rs1.02l CR
Highlighting long militancy period and pleading the case of Rs1.02 crore outstanding debt waiver, Badal maintained that Punjab should not be penalised anyone for the national battle it fought. He sought waiver of conditions imposed by the 13th Finance Commission on the resetting of interest on small saving loans asking the Minister to rework it at nine per cent instead of 9.5 and 10 per cent.
Badal also impressed upon Jaitley for waiver of Central loans in view of State’s distressed financial position.
He pointed that the Commission had already placed the States of Punjab, Kerala and West Bengal in the category of Revenue Deficit States and it recommended to the Centre to find out ways and means to bail out these States from financial stringency.
DISCUSSED POWER SECTOR ISSUES
Punjab sought Centre’s intervention in resolving issues like coal supply and fuel cost and quality that hinder
electricity generation at
thermal plants in the State. Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal held discussions on a range of issues concerning electricity situation in the State.
After meeting Coal and Power Secretaries, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal said: “We have asked the Government to provide tapering linkage for GVK’s Goindwal Sahib for one year.”
For Goindwal Sahib plant, coal will be sourced from Tokisud and Seregarha mines in Jharkhand.
These blocks are yet to be developed and therefore Punjab has sought tapering linkage. Punjab’s installed capacity 8,379 MW.
CENTRE TO TREAT SATlUJ AT PAR WITH GANGA
Centre decided to treat Satluj river at par with river Ganga in the prestigious National Mission for cleaning and development of rivers across the country. The decision was taken by the Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti in a meeting with Badal. Chief Minister expressed concern over the polluting of river Satluj, which was a sacred river for Punjabis. Soliciting Centre’s the support, Badal sought a special package for cleaning of rivers in the state on the pattern of the package envisaged for river Ganga.
Acceding to the demand, Bharti announced that the Union Government would treat river Satluj as a model river adding that every effort would be made to clean this river on the pattern of sacred river Ganga.
FlAGS UP THE ISSUE OF CENTURY OlD CANAl SYSTEM OF THE STATE
Chief Minister also demanded major central initiative for rehabilitation project for canals in the State which are 100-year-old, amounting to nearly Rs4,900 crore. He apprised that major water arteries in the State resultantly had either choked or clogged and their water carrying capacity had been severely reduced, in some cases as much as 20 per cent which has further increased the pressure on ground water irrigation resulting in an alarming fall in the water table. He said that this had brought the State on the brink of a major ecological disaster and dangerous threat of the entire State turning into a desert in the next few decades. Badal said the work on rehabilitation, extension, renovation, modernisation of various Canal Systems, restoring storage capacity of reservoirs required an amount of Rs4,128 crore which, he said, should be sanctioned at the earliest.
FOUR-lANING OF lUDHIANA-TAlWANDI BAI ROAD EXTENDED UP TO FEROZEPUR
In a major relief to the State’s border areas residents, the Centre approved to extend existing project of four-laning ludhiana-Talwandi Bai road up to Ferozepur. The decision was taken by Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari in a meeting with Punjab Chief Minister considering that the ongoing project could be more useful if it was extended up to the border town of Ferozepur.
DEMANDS INTEGRATED RURAl RENEWAl MISSION
Raising the issues of rural development, Badal urged Gadkari to initiate an Integrated Rural Renewal Mission on the lines of the Urban Renewable Mission for ensuring balanced and planned growth and development of villages and reducing pressure on urbanisation. Focus in this should be on providing modern city like facilities of sewerage, drinking water, pucca streets, street lights to our villages as nearly 70 per cent of India still lived in villages.
SEEKS SPECIAl CATEGORY ECONOMIC STATUS FOR PUNJAB
Badal also sought a Special Category Economic Status for Punjab in view of its peculiar geographical location and socio-economic conditions. He said that Punjab deserved this status for being a border State, the presence of large dark areas in the form of Kandi and Waterlogged regions and the presence of the highest per capita density of Scheduled Caste or Dalit population in the State, with nearly 30 percent of its population falling in that category, the highest in the country.
CENTRE AllOTS Rs671 CR FOR INSTAllING RO SYSTEM IN VIllAGES
Union Minister Gadkari announced to allocate a project of Rs671 crore to the state under which RO plants would be installed in 1,700 villages of the state in three years to ensure supply of potable drinking water to the people. Gadkari said that out of these, Rs300 crore would be given to the State this year.
CENTRE TO SET UP REGIONAl CENTRE OF CIFA IN PUNJAB
In a big leap forward towards promoting fish farming in Punjab as an integral part of crop diversification program, Punjab became the first-ever non-coastal State of the country to have the regional Centre of Central Institute
of Freshwater Aquaculture (CIFA). This decision was taken by the Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh in a meeting with Punjab Chief Minister who stated that Punjab has a tremendous scope of fish farming as already the State was leading the nation in fish productivity. Badal urged the Minister to embark a
special project for the State so as to encourage fish farming in a big way across the State,
especially in water logged areas in southern Punjab having brackish water.
COMPREHENSIVE DEBT RElIEF PACKAGE FOR FARMERS
Badal also demanded comprehensive Debt Relief Package for the farmers who are reeling under a debt burden of approximately Rs30,000 crore which had led to shocking phenomenon of farmers’ suicides.
Debt ridden farmers, he said, were abandoning agriculture and even becoming farm labour. He advocated that loans be extended to small and marginal farmers at an interest rate of two per cent for crop loan and six per cent for investment credit, and requested that the issue be taken by the Union Ministry of Agriculture with Ministry of Finance and with the RBI.