The Punjab Congress on Saturday called upon the Narendra Modi Government to effectively take up the issue of insecurity of minorities in general and that of the Sikhs in particular with the Pakistan Government where they were being hounded by the radical fundamentalists.
The resolutions to this effect were adopted at the meetings of all the district Congress committees held on Saturday.While the State party chief, Partap Singh Bajwa participated in the Jalandhar DCC meeting, the AICC Secretary Harish Chaudhary attended the Hoshiarpur meeting.
These meetings were held as per the directive of the AICC to the State units to hold meetings of the DCCs on every first Saturday of the month and that of the block committees on the second Saturday. First of these series of meetings to boost the party structure at the grass roots was held on Saturday.
The resolution expressed serious concern at the deteriorating situation with Sikhs becoming the target with eight of them having already been killed during the last year-and-a-half. The Sikhs from the border regions had migrated to Peshawar in large number. However, even Peshawar was not safe where 60 per cent of the business establishments belonging to the Sikhs had been closed. The resolution also referred to the migration of Hindus from Pakistan to India earlier who were still to be rehabilitated, said the Congress.
Bajwa added that another issue taken up at these meetings was the decision of the Parkash Singh Badal Government to increase the rate of VAT on diesel by one per cent effective from October 1 to mobilise about Rs110 crore.The resolution adopted by the party units described this step as retrograde as it would hit hard both industry and the farm sector.
The party said Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and the Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, had been opposing every hike in the prices of petroleum products during the UPA regime but their government itself had now raised the diesel price despite the fact that the VAT on diesel in this State was among the highest in the country. The party demanded its immediate withdrawal.