Amarinder rules out early poll in state

Samrala, Ludhiana, Mar 22 (UNI) Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today ruled out early polls in the state and stated that Assembly elections would be held as per schedule in February next year.

''My government is going to carry out fast development during the remaining period in each part of the state,'' he stated while talking to mediapersons here.

The Chief Minister said the state government had embarked upon an ambitious programme to augment the power supply in the state to overcome the shortage of 2300 MW. A number of power projects to generate power of upto 6000 MW were in the pipeline, he added.

He said companies like Reliance, ITC and Bharti Group had already joined hands with the Punjab government to set up their ventures in the agro-processing and cold chains sectors to give a thrust to the diversification of agriculture.

He asserted that with the improvement in the environment for the industrial growth because of the favourable policies of the government, 144 big projects with investments of more than 56,000 crore had already been cleared by the high power committee headed by him. These projects had the potential of generating around 10 lakh jobs.

The Chief Minister said the government had launched a comprehensive Rs 700 crore 'Punjab Nirman Programme' for development in urban and rural areas. Under this programme a sum of Rs 100 crore had already been released.

UNI HS SC KN1823