Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh is likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi to once again urge them to increase the State’s borrowing limit to enable it to implement the farm debt waiver scheme.
The Chief Minister, who will visit Delhi on Monday, is also expected to take up the contentious Sutlej-Yamuna-link (SYl) canal issue and demand special incentives, on the lines of the hill States, for the border areas of Punjab.
“Capt Amarinder will reach Delhi on Monday evening and is likely to meet the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister the next day,” a Punjab Government official said on Sunday.
The implementation of the farm loan waiver scheme is the top priority of the Congress Government. Capt Amarinder would urge the Centre to relax the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003, and enhance the State’s borrowing limit to enable it to meet its agriculture debt waiver commitments — the demands he had raised during his earlier meeting with the two only a fortnight ago.
Punjab Government wanted the Centre to increase the state’s borrowing limit by Rs 10,000 crore to fund the debt waiver scheme.
The Chief Minister is also expected to raise the SYl issue during the meeting. Punjab has been pressing for resolving the contentious SYl issue through negotiations. The state had earlier appealed to the Centre to facilitate dialogue with Haryana for early resolution of the matter.
The Supreme Court had on July 11 said that it was obligatory on the part of Punjab and Haryana to respect and execute its orders on the SYl canal issue. The apex court will hear the matter on September 7.
Other than that, Capt Amarinder is also expected to raise Punjab’s demand to cover its border and kandi areas under the sunset clause as was extended by the Centre to the neighbouring hill states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, other than the north-eastern States.