As the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday described the launching of 400 more Aam Aadmi Clinics across Punjab as the fulfilment of its another “guarantee”, the opposition has come down heavily on the ruling party for renaming the already existing government clinics and health centres.
Describing it as “merely a publicity stunt”, Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring said that it was a classic case of old wine in new bottles as the government was only renaming the existing health facilities. “Besides, these clinics looked more like AAP offices and extension counters than health centres,” he said.
“The State Government is only renaming the already existing facilities and naming these as ‘Aam Aadmi clinics’ as its purpose was more to gain political mileage than provide healthcare to the people…In the mad race of getting the numbers of so-called clinics jacked up, the AAP government has replaced the historic and religious names of various centres, including the one in Amritsar which was named after one of the Panj Pyaras,” he said.
Warring also asked as why these clinics were not named as “government clinics” and why as Aam Aadmi clinics with Chief Minister’s photograph. “Who is paying for it, the government or the AAP?” he asked, while asserting that the names of these clinics must be changed while also hinting at initiating legal course for the same.
Shiromani Akali Dal’s (SAD) leader Bikram Singh Majithia said that AAP Government was playing with the people’s lives by diverting primary health services from 50 per cent of the State’s population to indulge in a PR exercise to revive the party’s sinking ship. Stating that the entire exercise had the makings of a massive scam, Majithia demanded an independent probe into the issue. “SAD would approach Punjab Governor Banwarilal Purohit soon and urge him to order a probe into the scam, besides directing AAP not to use government schemes to project itself,” he said.