SAD dares Cong for debate in Assembly over govt's performance

Chandigarh, Sep 4 (UNI) Criticising the Congress government for the short duration of the coming Punjab Assembly session, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today demanded to extend the two-day period so that the crucial issues and could be discussed at length.

''As the people of the state are going to elect the next government in less than six months, we (SAD) challenge the ruling Congress to extend the session and hold a debate over the performance of the government in public view in the Vidhan Sabha,'' SAD general secretary Kanwaljit Singh told reporters here.

The government was running away from debate on the issues crucial to the state and that was the reason that the session has been convened for only two-days, September 14-15, Capt Singh said.

He said, practically only a single day would be left for the business as the first day would be devoted to obituary references.

The SAD would like to seek an explanation from the treasury benches on whether there was any investment out of the proposed mega projects worth Rs 85,000 crore sanctioned by the government over a year back, he said.

He said, the government ought to explain the hype created by it over the proposed investment of up to Rs 5,000 crore by the Reliance company, which was now scaling it down to less than Rs 500 crore. ''We will seek an answer to why the government owned land was alloted to the Reliance on high concessional rates, causing a loss of Rs 1500 crore to the state ex-chequer,'' he said.

Capt Singh pointed out that the Congress government had abolished 95,000 posts which led to further unemployment in the state. At least 36,000 posts were presently lying vacant in schools and the health centres were non-functional as there were no doctors available, especially in rural areas.

He said there was resentment among traders against the government as they were now forced to pay an average of 11 per cent taxes due to the ''irrational'' implementation of the value added tax (VAT), while they were paying only six per cent sales tax in the Akali-BJP regime. This, he claimed was the main reason for the price rise in the state.

UNI PS JN AJ PC1641