After ruling for two terms and seeking a third term in the Haryana Assembly polls, an overconfident Congress on Wednesday tried to ‘put an old wine in new bottle’, in its ‘poll manifesto’, released here while promising inclusive growth and welfare for all the sections of the society in Haryana.
The manifesto, which was released jointly by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and state Congress president Ashok Tanwar in the presence of party general secretary and in-charge of Haryana Congress affairs Shakeel Ahmed, Dr Ram Prakash, chairman of the Manifesto Committee and Naveen Jindal, chairman of publicity committee has few new things except all the old announcements Hooda had made during his rallies at Gohana and Panipat.
The 23-page manifesto focuses on agriculture and horticulture, irrigation, energy, industry, trade, commerce, FDI and health. It also talks about employment, women empowerment, Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes, urban and rural development and education with a promise to set up one university in every district.
Dr Ram Prakash, who read out the manifesto, admitted, “most of the things, included in this manifesto have either been announced or done,” but claimed they tried to tap new issues and areas for the welfare of the public in this manifesto.“The promise for promoting Self-Help Groups for women at the village level, Women Banks, besides 15 per cent recruitment for women by the year 2017 in police department is new in this manifesto”, clarified Prakash.
However, Hooda, while trying to woo the farmers and farm labourers said “Compensation amount of Rs10,000 per acre would be given to farmers affected by drought and floods”. Hooda said, “Congress does not want to sit on its past laurels, but intends to continue the unprecedented path of development growth and prosperity of Haryana in its endeavour to serve effectively. Now, we want to put Haryana on higher growth trajectory.”
SYl issue, he said, “though it’s an interstate matter and we would continue our effort till we not are able to get our share”. Hooda also assured to speed up the efforts of Haryana ‘s separate High Court at Chandigarh. “Chandigarh belongs to Haryana, it is capital of Haryana and we would certainly get our high court here”, said Hooda.While supporting the existing system of recruitment, Hooda said there is no necessity to change it for so called ‘transparency’.
“It is already approved by the apex bodies of recruitment agencies; we will follow it as it is”, said Hooda. He also promised for students elections in every college or university in State.
When asked how all the promised will fulfilled which requires huge budget, Hooda said our planned budget has been increased manifold now. “The plan budget for the year 2013-14 at 32,731 will be improved per capita income of the state is Rs1,35,007, the highest among the bigger States in the country,” said Hooda.
Motivated from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cleanliness drive, Congress put the word “Cleanliness” in poll manifesto specifically. “Special efforts will be made for cleanliness. Number of safai karmacharis will be increased. Every village in the State will be made Nirmal Gram. Kaccha houses will be made pucca in the slums. The usage of polythene will be stopped. There will be improvement in the sewerage system. More toilets will be built for the benefit of the people”.
Minimum Support Prices of potatoes, onions and tomatoes, like other crops, should be fixed to safeguard the producers from being exploited and attempt will be made to persuade the Centre for this, the manifesto says.
With Traori in Karnal region famous for production of Basmati rice, a modern ‘Rice Improvement Centre’ will be set up there while Basmati festival will also be held each year, it said. A national-level vegetable and fruit market will be built in every district.
With the party drawing flak from Opposition parties over “power shortage”, the manifesto said Congress is fully sensitive to the growing demand for power for agriculture, industry and domestic consumers. “Congress will install big plants based on gas and the existing thermal power plants will be modified. Our objective is to provide a minimum 22-hour power supply a day for various categories of consumers,” it said.