Express News Service
CHANDIGARH: Five-time former Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take concrete steps to expose the conspiracy behind the ongoing incidents of sacrilege by ordering a probe by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court and announce an economic, political, agricultural and territorial package for Punjab.
Modi will launch the assembly poll campaign of the BJP-led alliance in Punjab with a rally in Ferozepur on Wednesday. He will also lay the foundations of several developmental projects.
Badal listed five major issues on which he said a Prime Ministerial package would lend credence and respectability to Modi’s visit to Punjab. “As PM, you would earn a lot of goodwill and my personal gratitude if, before coming here, youannounce an economic, political, agricultural and territorial package to meet the demands of the Punjabis.”
The former CM also drew the PM’s attention to thousands of Sikh families awaiting justice over the massacre of 1984. Badal said that the PM’s visit would then truly be a welcome gesture and would heal many past wounds inflicted by successiveCongress governments.
He said that he was making this request on the eve of the PM’s visit just to remind him of his sacred obligations to the country’s food bowl and sword arm, Punjab.
Badal also demanded a major agricultural economic package to pull the Punjab farmers out of the tragic crisis into which they have sunk as a result of agricultural indebtedness.
He said that the visit of the Prime Minister to the state was always a welcome step despite being too close to elections to sound genuine. “But it would be a great gesture if you go beyond optics and announce steps like an inquiry by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court to go into the conspiracy behind the painful series of sacrilegious incidents against the Sikh faith and address other issues facing the people of the state.”
Badal asked the PM to heed the expectations of Punjabis on the resolution of their other long-standing major demands including the transfer of Chandigarh and other Punjabi-speaking areas and the resolution of the river waters issue along riparian principles.
He also drew the attention of the Prime Minister to the loss of over 800 lives in the struggle against the three farm laws on agriculture and said that these sacrifices must be acknowledged by a concrete gesture by the Union government to help their families. “This was especially important as these sacrifices were made opposing the laws framed by the Union government and the government has since acknowledged the advisability of annulling these laws.”
