The treasury benches and opposition on Tuesday engaged in a war of words over the issue of giving facilities to sportspersons and soldiers in the State.
During the zero hour in Haryana Assembly, Leader of opposition and INLD’s senior leader Abhay Singh Chautala alleged that the State Government has insulted the sportspersons of Haryana.
Earlier, the medal winners of Commonwealth Games were insulted, now the Government has insulted the medal winners of Asian Games held at Jakarta recently, Chautala alleged.
No one from the State Government reached the airport to receive the medal winners of Asian Games, he said.
Continuing his tirade against the State Government, the INLD leader said that earlier, the Government had to cancel its felicitation function for the States Commonwealth Games medal winners following threats of boycott from the top athletes over the proposed cut in their prize money.
Former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that the Government is making fun of sportspersons.
INLD’s Parminder Singh Dhull said that there are shortcomings in the sports policy framed by the State Government and it should be applicable to people with domicile of Haryana otherwise outsiders will play for Haryana and get cash awards and jobs.
On this, Haryana Sports and Youth Affairs Minister clarified that clauses of sports policy ensures that only people from the State will be benefitted from the sports policy.
He also claimed that the cash reward under various categories for medal winners have been increased manifold during the current BJP’s regime.
The sportspersons from Haryana won 17 medals in Asian games held at Jakarta recently. In these games, Haryana won five gold medals, five silver medals and seven bronze medals. Soon a State-level function will be organised here to honour them, Vij added.
After the Minister’s reply, the Congress legislators tried to corner the State Government over its sports policy while the ruling BJP launched a scathing attack on the Congress for recent order of Punjab and Haryana High Court, which set aside the regularisation policies framed in 2014 by previous Congress Government.
Haryana Minister Krishan Kumar Bedi accused the Congress of betraying the Government employees for political gains ahead of 2014 elections.
Earlier, demanding withdrawal of ESMA, Congress’ Karan Dalal said that the Government had earlier promised to bring a Bill to regularize the services of contractual employees affected due to High Court order.
But later, it took a u-turn and decided to file SLP in Supreme Court.
The Government should give explanation on its stand on contractual employees, he demanded.
Later, the BJP and Congress MLAs also traded charges against each other over the issue of one rank one pension.
Speaking during the zero hour, Congress MLA Geeta Bhukkal while raising the demands of ex-service and sainik organisations, said that compensation given to the families of martyrs should be increased from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore.
Other demands included housing facility for them, job for disabled sainiks and increase in honorarium of ex-serviceman employed by the Haryana Government.
BJP MLA Abhay Singh Yadav also backed the demand of increase in compensation given to the families of martyrs.
Reacting to the demands raised by Geeta Bhukkal, Finance Minister Capt. Abhimanyu slammed the Congress Government for not implementing one rank one pension during its tenure.
The Minister also accused the Congress of doing politics on deaths of soldiers.
He informed the House that the present government has given 230 jobs to the dependent of martyrs while till 2004, 66 jobs were given and 17 jobs were given from 2004 to 2014.