lashing out at the opening of Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal’s Sukhvilas just two months ahead of 2017 polls, the state Congress on Thursday accused the Badals of brazenly promoting their interests.
“The Badals are brazenly promoting their interests while deliberately allowing various important Bills and Ordinances to go to the Governor with serious lacunae, leading to their rejection and giving a lie to the doles being dished out by the Akali government to various sections of the people,” said the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) leaders Jagmohan Singh Kang, Balbir Singh Sidhu and Deepinder Singh Dhillon.
They charged the Badals with misleading and befooling the people with false announcements, without having any intention of ensuring their implementation.
“The entire drama of announcing sops for the people is clearly aimed at wooing voters ahead of the Assembly elections,” they alleged while demanding immediate imposition of the Code of Conduct by the Election Commission in the state “to prevent the government from spreading such lies and disinformation and from continuing to abuse official machinery to promote Akali interests”.
PPCC leaders were reacting to the reports that Punjab Governor VS Badnore had sent back to the state government the ordinance on regularization of 27,000 adhoc or contractual employees, even as a report said that the Oberoi Sukhvilas Resort and Spa, in which Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal and his wife have a majority stake, had opened for business.
“The opening of Sukhvilas, which had been marred by several controversies since the project launch, showed blatant misuse of office by Sukhbir. After first having got the Mullanpur masterplan amended to name it New Chandigarh to help real estate giants Omaxe and DlF, and then getting a road constructed at government expense around Sukhvilas in Palanpur, Sukhbir had now gone ahead with the opening of the resorts in blatant disregard of all political norms,” they said.
PPCC leaders also cited the huge advertisements and publicity material, including hoardings etc, which the Akalis continue to release at government expense to boost their electoral prospects ahead of the polls.
And while Sukhbir and his father, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, are busy promoting their personal interests, key Bills and Ordinances aimed at implementing the various doles and sops that the government has announced for various sections of the people are being not accepted, or returned, by the Governor, they said.
“It cannot be a coincidence that, from the SYl de-acquisition Bill to the water cess Bill and now the regularisation Bill, the Badal government has failed to get the Governor’s assent on so most of its vital public announcements. Either the Badals did not take permission from their ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), before introducing the Ordinances or Bills or have deliberately kept
them technically weak,” added Congress leaders.